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Let's All Speak Pidgin Languages

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My Iranian friend usually makes the mistake of referring to a male as 'she' and vice-versa. As usual, she offers an apology (which I do not consider necessary) and corrects her mistake. She had shared with me in the past that the Persian language had no gender designation and it got me thinking about the Yoruba language as well.  As we sat down over coffee yesterday with our Chinese and Indian friends, I realised how related my local Nigerian language was to theirs. One thing stood out for us - none of our local languages had any gender differentiation. 'He' or 'She' didn't exist in our languages, rather we had words to differentiate between an older person and a younger person as a sign of respect - a trait completely absent in the English language. The French language is even more complicated and interesting on the gender qualification as even things needed to be qualified as female or male. We realised that languages had their different idiosyncrasie...
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USA Opportunity Funds Program

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The United States Embassy, Nigeria is calling for applications from academically qualified, highly motivated, low-income students for the EducationUSA Opportunity Funds Program (OFP). OFP’s mission is to assist talented and determined, low-income students who are good candidates for financial assistance from U.S. colleges and universities but lack the financial resources to cover the up-front cost of obtaining admission. OFP works closely with students through regularly scheduled meetings and seminars to assist them throughout the application process to secure admission and scholarships to attend colleges and universities in the United States. OFP finances the cost of the application process, including registration fees for required standardized examinations and provides free membership to the U.S. EducationUSA Advising Center for its participants.  Participants will work with EducationUSA Advisors from June 2017 – August 2018 to try to secure places and financial assi...
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Opinion Piece - Internship is NOT Servitude

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The past weeks have been quite busy for me. From summer parties to workshops, to lab work to deadlines etc. In the midst of all these activities, I have had sweet conversations, some of which I would be sharing with you as soon as I pen them down. I would start with the most recent interesting talk I had with a friend. It seemed like the season of internships in her office and they had a total of five new interns for the summer. She was saddled with the responsibility of mentoring three of them directly and she totally enjoyed it. As she went on with her conversation about the interns at her workplace, the conversation soon focused on the attitude of the different interns to work. She complained about one of the girls who was so sweet, respectful and loving but who might end up not learning anything - her reason was simple. Homegirl was too busy running errands and cleaning up after others that she almost had no time to do quality work. This story reminded me of my days as an i...
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