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Dear Henry,
Through you I'd like to thank all who have made possible the prompt and informative postings on the recent election theft in Kenya. I look at the website and Ed's newsletters occasionally but until recently have felt I have little to contribute. Maybe I do, and maybe you can suggest an opening. Since we last met at DC-01 I've turned translator and become interested in the living Latin movement, that group of Latinists who are re-establishing it as a modern world language with an unbroken literary tradition reaching from 500 B.C. through 25 centuries up to the present day. My particular interest is modern Latin poetry. If there are any E. African schools offering or interested in Latin, I can provide texts of short modern Latin poems (about 100 pieces 25 lines or less by 70 authors from 18 nations) written in this century and the last, of good literary quality, accessible to first- and second-year students, and dealing with dozens of modern topics as well as the human experiences writers have always addressed (love, death, God, etc). Although none of the pieces is about Africa itself, they provide living examples of the fact that Latin can express whatever needs to be said at any time in any place. Many of them I've translated into English so that they are bilingual texts and I would translate as many more as are needed. I can also provide bibliographies of current living Latin websites and modern Latin literature, as well as other evidence that Latin is alive and well in the 21st century A.D. There is a school in Nairobi that caters to the international community and includes Latin in its curriculum, but I'd particularly like to reach a native student audience to see if Latin can be planted in Africa to grow. If enough young African minds can be inspired by what they read and nature takes its course (e.g. Chinua Achebe), Africa may well enter onto the modern Latin literary scene. Wasn't it Pliny who said, "Always something new out of Africa" (Ex Africa aliquid semper novi). Do you know any schools where Latin is being taught, or any Africans interested in Latin? Whom else in TEAA might I ask about this? Best wishes from drought-ridden North Carolina where Lake Waccamaw is two feet low. Bill Cooper |