Here in Ethiopia it is common for little children to shout ferenj when they see a white face. I am told that this comes from the Amharic word for a French person, ፈረንሳዊ (pronounced färänsawi), because French people were among the first white people Ethiopians had seen.
Today G and I were running down a dirt track through a small village and a small girl, about 4 years old, saw us running past. She shouted,
China! China!
I heard the other day that there were two old men sitting on a hillside in north Wello, watching the Chinese labourers building a new road. They were old-timers, who had fought against the Italians in 1935, and then watched the Italians build the first roads across the Blue Nile gorge and up to Eritrea. (”What have the Romans ever done for us?”) As these men watched the Chinese roll out the tarmac, one of them said to the other:
The Italians are back. Only now they have narrower eyes.
A sign of the times; dispatches from Ethiopia
Via Owen Abroad:
Chris Blattman shared musings on this very shift in global influence - captured in the shouts of African children and casual conversations - in 2008.