When you stand in the Great Hall at the British Museum you are struck by the irony of its existence. There is a constant hum of multiple languages all communicating at once. On this particular day in January there must have been around 80-90% of sightseers from overseas to visit a collection of objects that continue to be controversial in their collection and motivation of housing them. Europe took great care to identify and name as much as possible, spreading enlightened thoughts around the globe and writing down a significant history about themselves in the pursuit of knowledge.

 

 

​

​

An Interesting Fact About Nightjars

We the Europeans named our one and only type of nightjar resident here in the UK where it lives for four or five months. Of some five different types of nightjar they might meet, the Akan people have one common name for all the birds ‘Santhrofie’, in English ‘Trouble Should Happen At Home’ Its translation perhaps alludes to some of the folklore that follows it and a very different taxonomy of words used in naming things.