This is a story about an African nation’s fatal disregard of its minority population. It is also a story about the muddled sludge of colonial history.
He is an Anglophone Cameroonian, and his home is in peril. News reports, sparse as they are, refer to what is going on in the western region of Cameroon as the “Anglophone crisis,” and it gives a somewhat benign linguistic tint to what is in fact a blistering devastation. Hundreds have died. Villages emptied, homes and shops reduced to blackened debris.
The carnage is not so much about language as it is about yet another African nation’s fatal disregard of its minority population. It is also about the muddled sludge of Europe’s colonial legacy.
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Ms. Adichie is a novelist.
