The Black Knight – Sir Lewis Hamilton

 The year is 1991, Carmen Laberlestier dumps her son at the home of her baby daddy. The baby daddy, Anthony Hamilton, had no idea what to do with his son, when the mother brought him to stay with him. The boy was only 6 years old.

Anthony, a black man, had married a white woman, Carmen Laberlestier, with whom this child had been born. But the couple divorced soon after, and Anthony left the child with the mother. Carmen moved on with a different man, who insisted the boy be returned to his father. At the age of 10, Lewis permanently moves in the father, Anthony.

The boy is what the world has come to know as Lewis Hamilton.

To keep his son busy, Anthony bought Lewis a radio-controlled car where adults would line up and remotely race. He noticed his son beat these adults, over and over again, and realized the son had extraordinary motor abilities.

Anthony bought his son a second-hand karting car at the age of 8 which needed a lot of work to function. Only white kids at this time were going for Karting because buying, hiring or even maintaining a karting car was very expensive and most black people could not afford it.

When Anthony and his son, Lewis first showed up for the karting race, white people frowned at them, and the boy was a bit shy to find himself in unfamiliar ground. While other white kids drove new and superior Karting cars, Anthony Hamilton kept assembling his son’s car from the scrap metal he was collecting in garages, for fixing over the weekend.

To keep up with the expenses of his son’s passion, Anthony Lewis had to take up four jobs.

At the age of 10, Lewis met Mclaren boss, Tim Ron Dennis. Anthony had bought tickets to the British Grand Prix and Dennis was observing the kids who were competing for the junior races. Little Lewis Hamilton approached Dennis and said, “Hi, I am Lewis Hamilton, my drean is to drive for you, Mclaren.”

“Oh, okay, call me in 9 years, maybe we can work something out.” Dennis responded.

Lewis went on and won the F3 Championships, the GP2 Championships and nothing could stand before him in the F1. Lewis first formula 1 race was with Mclaren in 2007, he ended third, and lost the Championship by 1 point. He won his first Championship the next year, in 2008.

Lewis Hamilton raced for Formula 1 as the FIRST black person, and the youngest ever, and has gone ahead and won 7 Championships beating the legend Schumacher’s record. Lewis Hamilton recognizes what it means being a minority in a white space. He once said, “It would be nice to see more black people in the crowd, the crowd is still so white.”

On Wednesday, 15^th December, 2021, Lewis Hamilton was made a knight, at Buckingham Palace.

Thank You Sir Lewis Hamilton for breaking the ceiling for not only putting a black face in white sport but also thriving.

Black child, embrace your struggles and tribulations. In that fog you are undergoing, someone will see you.

Is Lewis Hamilton one of the best Formula 1 drivers of all time? Share your thoughts below …

Signs She Secretly Loves You

I love her deeply from the depth of my heart, so I want to know, does she like me or not. Does she love me secretly and hiding her feelings, or it is just me assuming all things? Looking for a partner is not that easy. Especially for brothers - because girls are bit more complicated and mysterious than boys.

Girls do not express their feelings so easily, so the question comes how to know if a girl likes you but is hiding it due to shyness or any other reason. When you love a girl, then you bound to look for the signs she secretly loves you or wants to be in a relationship with you.

The fact is, girls are not that expressive, so they try to find to hide their feelings even if they are deeply in love with someone. It often happens when we love someone, we try to hide it because we are afraid of rejection and sometimes, we don’t feel good enough for that beautiful person. And so, if she is hiding her love for you then it might be that she is not feeling good about herself and wants you take the first step.

And another important thing you must remember, a girl would never like to take the first step to impress you or tell you about her feelings. But before taking those steps, you should have to know whether she loves you or not .. Here are signs that she might secretly love you.

1. She smiles at you often; - A smile makes girls more attractive and beautiful. And most girls know this fact pretty well, and they try to get the whole benefit of that. A girl often smiles at a person she likes without any reason. You will notice when she is talking to someone else and you pass through her way or you are looking at her, she will suddenly raise her voice try to show more interest in the conversation, so that you can notice her. She is all of these things just for your attention. And you need to have a keen eye, so you do not miss them. She is giving you a signal that she is available for a conversation.

What to do: Make eye contact but do not stare. Give a warm and confident smile. Break the ice and start a conversation with her.

2. She makes longer eye contact with you; - Eye contact is a very powerful communication tool that helps to build a connection between two people. When someone is over using this tool, then it means that person wants to build a connection with you. a connection that could be the base of the relationship between you too. Whenever you are wondering about how to know if a girl likes you but is hiding it or just your mind overthinking about it, just look into her eyes.

Science says normal eye contact is between 3-5 seconds. So, if a girl looks into your eyes more than that time without saying a word, then it probably might mean she likes you and wants to build a connection.

3. She tries to be around you; - Trust me no girl that secretly despises you would ever enjoy your company. She will always find some ways to be around you if she is genuinely interested in you. in my own experience when we like someone, we try to be around them. Either we want to more about them or want them to notice us.

What other signs have you noticed from girls that secretly love you? If you care to share, add them in the comments below…

The Most Linguistically Diverse Place on the Planet is Africa

 

Introduction

From the beginning of time, humans lived and worked in Africa, leaving evidence of their existence in the sands of the Sahara Desert and valleys of the great rivers, such as Nile and Niger. Some of the earliest great civilizations were born there, and they gave us insight into the smaller kingdoms of ancient Africa.

Because of the huge history diversity of Africa, learning about it may be a bit of a challenge. Africa keeps many secrets, and they are there, ripe for picking – and one of the major ones is that Africa is also a fascinating place from a linguistics perspective.

The continent has more than 2,000 distinct languages, equating to a third of all languages in global terms. Europe by comparison has 300 languages. Based on the Ethnologue index of linguistic diversity, 20 of the top 25 most linguistically diverse countries are in Africa.

History of African Languages

Africa is such a diverse continent of a number of languages spoken as a testimony to this. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages according to SI Ethnologue and the African language program, at Harvard. Most of the languages in Africa are primarily oral with little availability in written form.

There are about 52 listed extinct languages in Africa. These languages are from across different regions in Africa. One example of these languages is Ancient Egyptian - This language is an Afro-Asiatic language. Its earliest known complete written sentence has been dated to about 2690 BC, which makes it one of the oldest recorded languages known along with Sumerian language. Its written system includes; Kariong Hieroglyphs, Cursive Kariong Hieroglyphs, and Coptic.

One other extinct language is Esuma (Essouma) language of uncertain classification within the Kwa branch of the Niger-Congo family, once spoken in the villages of Assinie (Asini) and Mafia in Ivory Coast. The Esuma were vassals of the Sanwi capital Krinjabo, and shifted to the Anyin and Nzima languages.    

The last example of an extinct language among many others is The Yeni language is an extinct language of Cameroon, formerly spoken around Djeni Mountain in the Nyalang area. All that remains of the language, apparently, is a song remembered by some Sandani speakers. However, according to Bruce Connell (the first linguist to report its existence, in 1995), comparison of the song's words to neighboring languages suggests that "it was closely related to [the Mambiloid languages] Cambap, Njerep, and Kasabe

Why is Africa so Linguistically Diverse?

Humans have populated Africa for more than 5 million years. One of the reasons for the continents rich linguistic diversity is simply down to time – people in Africa have had more time to develop languages than people elsewhere in the world.

But the development of Africa’s language is also due to cultural and political factors. According to evolutionary linguist Salikoko Mufwene from the university of Chicago, while European nations focused less on widely spoken languages into extinction as they expanded their empires, in Africa languages were allowed to flourish.

“Traditional African kingdoms were not as assimilationist as the Europeans empires… Say the kings relied on interpreters to translate to them what was coming from territories that they ruled but were people who spoke different languages, there is no particular reason why we should be surprised that there is so many languages spoken in Africa.”

Multilingual Citizens

Although all the languages are important and beautiful, their popularity varies. Of all the diverse languages, tribes and groups; there are 8 languages that more widely spoken on the continent.

The ‘Berber’ language is the 8^th most widely spoken language in Africa. It is a group of 26 closely related languages that constitute a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. They are spoken by 14 to 15 million people in Northern Africa. Throughout the Mediterranean coast, Sahara Desert, and the Sahel – an area once dominated by Berbers before the arrival of the Arabs.

The 7^th widely spoken language in Africa is ‘Oromo’- it is widely spoken in the horn of Africa and other surrounding nations including; Ethiopia, Egypt, Kenya and Somali. It is the most widely spoken language in Ethiopia.

Next on the list as the 6^th widely spoken language in Africa is ‘Amharic.’ It is the Second-largest Semitic Dialect on the continent after Arabic. Amharic is one of the very few African languages that uses its own alphabet whilst most other languages use either Arabic or Latin letters. 

Number 5 on the list is ‘Igbo.’ This is the native language of the Igbo people of Nigeria – One of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. It is approximated that 27 million people speak the language on the continent. Interestingly, the language has more than 20 dialects. This diversity is one of the beauties and dynamics of African culture.

 

The 4^th widely spoken language in Africa is ‘Yoruba’ one of the principal languages in Nigeria but spoken by other west African countries like Ghana, Ivory Coast, Togo, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

‘Hausa’ is the 3^rd largest language on the African continent. The language originated from a dialect in Kano, Nigeria. It is widely used in business and education in Nigeria and other parts of west Africa. Besides, it is one of the few African languages that are taught in international universities due to its immerse literature.

‘Swahili’ is the 2^nd most popularly spoken language on the continent. Huge chunk of the vocabulary in Swahili is derived from the Arabic language because of the interactions of the Arabic traders from the 15^th and 16^th centuries. There are also other Swahili words that have been originally derived from – German, Portuguese, English, Hindustani and French.   

‘Arabic’ is the most widely spoken language in Africa. However, the language is mostly concentrated in North Africa and some parts of Sub Sharan Africa. It is estimated that they are more than 150 million people who speak Arabic as their first language in Africa, making it the most spoken language on the continent. Arabic comes in number of flavors – Modern Standard Arabic and Colloquial dialects. If you learn modern standard Arabic, you will be able to communicate with most Arabic speakers around the world.

Arabic speakers on the continent of Africa make up over 50% of the total speakers of Arabic in the world. Arabic is the official language of many African nations.   

Final Thoughts

A study conducted by Shigeki Kaji of Kyoto University in 2013, centered on inhabitants of the Ugandan town of Hoima, found that the average inhabitant knows 4.34 languages. Such multilingualism is impressive, particularly when one considers that we are not talking about language scholars, but about average citizens just going about their business and flicking effortlessly between 4 or more languages.

My Top 5 Best African Shows on Netflix

The African continent has seen a large growth in the number of T.V shows in the last decade; Mainly due to the fact that the conditions of many African families are improving day by day with more facilities – there is an increase in interest of African people to watch and participate in these shows. And it is grabbing the sight of Netflix filmmakers.

Netflix has been present in Africa since 2016 and there are more than approximately 1.4 million Netflix subscribers on the African continent.

My Top 5 Best African Shows on Netflix:  

-         5  Kings of Joburg; This is the story of two brothers who lead the criminal underground but are entangled in a family curse that is told in the show. This TV drama combines crime, family, brotherhood and supernatural to create a modern yet mysterious appeal. This Crime thriller which debuted on Netflix in 2020 is one of the best African TV series to watch on Netflix.

-          4 Queen Sono; A South African crime drama streaming TV series that debuted February 2020. This is the 1^st African original series on Netflix. The release of Queen Sono on Netflix was greeted with critical acclaim, pump, and pageantry. The performance, cinematography, production, plot and overwhelm mood of the film were highly acclaimed by critics. Only 1 season in 6 episodes, it follows the life of a South African secret agent who struggles with her personal life while dealing with crime in her city. Due to Covid constraints that have hampered production, Netflix has paused/reversed season to production.

-         3 Journey of an African Colony; It is a 7 episode Nigerian film documentary series about the country’s history. On the 60^th anniversary of Nigerians Independence it was distributed on Netflix. The film series narrated by its director, is a visual encyclopedia of the consequences of the slave trade, colonialism and the current Nigerian civil war. It sparked a lot of discussion about Nigerian history.

-        2  Dead Places; A horror series first released in 2021. It is of a writer who returns to South Africa to write his new novel haunted by recollections of the past. His investigations take him to some of South Africa most haunted locations where he encounters dangerous demonic entities.

-         1  The Mystic River; The plot reflects both ancient cultural behaviors that should be eradicated and those that are worthy of emulation. The supernatural horror series is based on a narrative set in a secluded Nigerian community where many women in a village begin to disappear, and they have something in common. Those who vanished from the village were reportedly pregnant. This remains a mystery until a doctor arrives with a child and gets dangerously close to uncovering some of the most terrible secrets that have been kept hidden.