Speeches

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The way I see it, Ugandans love showing off their publich speaking skills. Albeit, according to standards I’ve been taught, they aren’t very good at it. Rapidly rising and falling tones, over emphasis on nothing worth emphasizing, hand gestures that become blurry with speed, and most annoying of all, an all knowing tone that implies ‘do not argue with me.’ Among our professors and guest lecturer’s there were only a few that were more reasonable and understandable from my (our?) standpoint. But when you step outside of the classroom, almost everyone I’ve met and heard a speech from, speaks in the same pattern. Speakers at Sunday Church, taxi (special hire) drivers, drunk people at bars/clubs, people we interviewed for class…you name it, although mostly they were men.

I suspect, just as how we are taught at home to speak to a crowd in a ‘correct’ way, Ugandans have their own standard of what is engaging speech. I wonder if when Ugandans see the “western way of speaking” would they feel we are unenthusiastic and boring?