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The expatriate comes from a liberal country in the Northern Hemisphere. Often, we’re misled to believe that ‘Liberal’ countries can be defined as such because they have democratic institutions, or else it’s because they debate the possibility of gay marriage or allow beards in the workplace.
But in reality the best definition of a ‘Liberal’ country is that it’s a country in which swearing (in Kenya, ‘cursing’) is a permitted norm.
Regardless of his class of origin, the expatriate is a swearer, and he’s proud of it. Indeed, many of the most notorious of English’s ‘four-letter words’ are the oldest and most ‘pure’ of the Anglo-Saxon words still existing in the British Isles, and this in itself is evidence that they’ve been uttered unchangingly down the ages, and proudly.
It may well be that Britain’s recent ‘Brexit’ (its suicidal desire to break with Europe) was in some sense an unconscious attempt to preserve these vulgar Anglo-Saxon swear words, protecting them from weedy continental alternatives such as the pathetic French ‘Sacrebleu’ which, as everyone knows, the fascistic French Academy of Linguistics wanted to impose on the people of England.
It might well be true that even the most vile of Englishmen these days doesn’t say the ‘C Word’, but all others are pretty much fair game, from the Class A ‘F Word’ through the Class B ‘B*ll*cks’ down to the Class C ‘Damn’.
Class A words can’t even be spelt out; Class B words can, but with certain vowels substituted with asterisks; Class C words can be written in full in the national newspapers. Almost certainly, the most common and popular of Class B words in present-day Britain include: ‘B*gg*r’, ‘B*ll*cks’ and the evergreen ‘Sh*t’.
In the UK, many of them may be spoken in front of your grandmother. Indeed, it’s often your grandmother who first drops them into conversation. One suspects that even the Queen of England is fond of the occasional ‘B*gg*r’.
However, the expatriate who has recently arrived in Kenya should not assume that swearing is socially acceptable in Kenya. Let’s face it, any country that calls swearing ‘cursing’ is a country that still believes that to swear is somehow to sin. So, dear expatriate, don’t you be a rude bastard, you bloody idiot. Ooops, sorry.
I married across the cultures. In addition to the usual surprising joys of that institution, marriage, I have personally found that the greatest cultural consequence of my ‘I do’ is that I’ve had to moderate my rude language. In the UK I would ‘Sh*t’ with permitted and enthusiastic frequency, secure in the knowledge that no one would judge me nor suffer heart attacks.
In Kenya, however, even at perfectly understandable times, for instance when accidentally hitting your thumb with a hammer, or when your Land Rover refuses to start after the third attempt, swearing is frowned upon. Instead, Kenyans keep their violent rage inside, unspoken. This pent-up desire to curse might well explain why violent lynchings are so frequent across the republic.
