Problems and Solutions in the Golden English Language (Essay‪)‬

WE'RE SITTING OUTSIDE A JUICE BAR off the main street of Axum in northern Ethiopia. I'm nursing a bright orange mango juice, and trying to ignore the attentions of the local children who equate white skin with money, when John says, "Who wants to go to the English language class?" His teenage son and daughter aren't at all enthusiastic and neither am I. We've spent the afternoon trampling round the main tourist sites in this ancient town, where the Ethiopians are rightly proud of the field full of stelae--free-standing granite obelisks, pre-Christian carved stones as mysterious as Stonehenge, the tallest of which soars twenty-six meters into the sky, while its thirty-three-meter rival lies shattered below after failing to stay upright. Axum was the capital of an empire that traded across the pre-Christian world and was eventually led by a royal dynasty descended from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. It still boasts the Ark of the Covenant, housed in a complex of fairly modern churches a stone's throw from where we're sitting. But we declined the opportunity to pay 6c birr--$6, a fortune by local standards--to enter this holy of holies, because women aren't permitted inside the main church and no one, male or female, is allowed to see the Ark.