Ouch! Rumble in the Semi-Literate Jungle

By Reg Green 

 As the volcanic debate continues to spew its detritus I remember a long ago article by George Plimpton, the Paris Review co-founder, that described how some of the world’s top sports journalists, assigned to cover the Muhammad Ali/George Foreman fight in Zaire in 1974, and with time heavy on their hands, invented a primitive language to speak mysteriously to each other so that, for example, one might ask about another colleague and be answered, “He m’Bele. He very m’Bele.”