[1]
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 13:07:28
From: James M Lance, Heinemann Publishers
        <jlance007@juno.com>


Too add to the list of names.  A D.O. stationed in the Northern
Territories of the then Gold Coast was given the moniker
"Gompuri" (and my apologies to linguists and indigenous speakers
for my undoubtedly inaccurate phonics), or "Big Belly."
Something he ate must have disagreed with him for the fellow died
in Gambaga and his grave still stands at the edge of the town.



[2]
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 00:08:07
From: Vietato Fumare, American University-Rome
         <wapichuu@hotmail.com>


In east Africa, the common name for whites is the Kiswahili
"mzungu." Most dictionaries translate it just as "white," or
"European." A friend told me that it also has a pejorative,
slightly mocking meaning--but she refused to tell me what it was.
She said my own nickname among the Luyia with whom I worked was
translated as "shit disturber." I've forgotten what this was in
Luyia (it was 11 years ago), but I took it as, if not a
compliment, at least accurate.

An interesting parallel exists with peasants in Vietnam, where I
also worked. There, the term for white translates as "long nose,"
and is considered pejorative. They also give nicknames to
foreigners. Mine was Mr. Dai, meaning something like "Mr. tough
shoeleather." At least, that's what they told me.....



[3]
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 13:18:07
From: Jonathan Reynolds, Northern Kentucky University
        <sagiru@hotmail.com>


In Northern Nigeria, missionaries were often referred to as
"Dogon Gaimu" (long beards).  My best guess is that this
reference has its origin in the Alsatian Catholic missions, since
the Alsatians all wore long beards.  The term was also used as a
derogatory reference to the Islamiyya schools that sought to
integrate Western-style instruction with Islamic learning --
beginning in the 1950s.  The opponents of these schools called
them "Makarantar Dogon Gaimu" (schools of the long beards).



[4]
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 20:43:49
From: Carol and Marvin Sicherman
        <sicher@cyburban.com>


There are two examples in my book _Ngugi wa Thiong'o:  The Making
of a Rebel_ (London: Hans Zell, 1990).  John Lonsdale told me
that "wakarwigi,"  translated as "small hawk" (karwigi) was an
allusion to L. S. B. Leakey on account of his spy network; it
implied a hawk waiting to pounce on the choicest meat.  But Muga
Gicaru, in _Land of Sunshine_, translated the same term as
"Deceitful Villain" and said it referred to an English radio
newsreader "who spoke Kikuyu fairly well but with a peculiar
accent, so that it was hard to understand him" (115); Gicaru says
that as a result, Africans called him "Ibilisi" (Prince of
Devils) or "Wakarwigi" and refused to listen to him.

The second term, also Gikuyu, is "Waitina mzungu," which
literally means a white person with big buttocks.  One person to
whom it may refer (who was known as Muru wa Waitina, or Son of
the Fat Man) was a soldier named Bothma.  Ngugi suggested to me
that this man might have been retained by the Kenyatta government
as a security officer in charge of detention camps.  If so, the
example connects ways of coping in the colonial and the
neocolonial periods.

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