With our friend and colleague Stephen Arnold in Guadeloupe at the 1993 African Lit Association. The occasion was the presentation of the Fonlon-Nichols Award to the Cameroonian – Ivoirien novelist and playwright Werewere Liking.
I had composed a short statement in the best Guadeloupean Kreyol I could muster. I mustered well enough to have been sorely embarrassed when, afterwards, Guadeloupeans began speaking at me in it.
Regrèt, mwen konnen sèlman kreyòl liv, I had to say in my pitiful Haitian-inflected Kreyol:
Sorry, All I know is book creole.