West African release missing some countries?
We had seen it coming...
And it was included in our November new releases post, although we did not know yet which countries it would appear in.
This stamp is instantly identifiable as a 'multi-country' issue, as it does not have the usual two letter Country Code in it. Like other similar issues, we are left to speculate where it will appear...
In November's release, this is also the case with the 'Gustavus Adolphus Day' stamp – a Swedish king, but also commemorated in Finland and another country. Hence, no country code on it.
Where would Jollof Rice appear?
When we find the new stamps in the SLOWLY API database (nowadays, usually a single batch added near the end of one month, containing all of the following month's stamps), we get the images for posting on Reddit and for our own Slowly Stamps WIKI – a unique and volunteer-run source of the most detailed information on all the SLOWLY-issued stamps.
Research is de rigueur
As we need to place the stamps, and we do create individual new pages for ALL the new commemoratives.
One would imagine this is ADDED VALUE to the stamps, right? Most people would not know what many commemoratives, or even my favourite Location stamps are showing.
SLOWLY itself should be documenting the stamps, but they don't - their public social media pages are very quiet, sadly, a missed opportunity in my opinion. But the company's head seems to not give communications with the public or the user base the importance one would expect.
Since we have a 'Jollof Rice' page, we researched it, and my good friend Mapuo edited and made it complete.
The stamp appeared last night
Midnight local time is when new stamps are 'unlocked'. This happens usually 3 days before the commemorated date, and the Jollof Rice stamp came out, will be available until November 4 - as shown in the banner on this post, above.
The stamp appears to be available in 3 West African countries at the moment – Nigeria, Senegal and The Gambia.
But – what about the others we had read about?
Yes, we were surprised this did not appear in Ghana. Or other countries which the wonderful Wikipedia page identified so well.
Some partial quotes?
From the Wikipedia page:
West African countries typically have at least one variant form of the dish, with Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cameroon particularly competitive as to which country makes the best jollof.[4] In the mid-2010s this expanded into the “Jollof Wars”.
So, what happened?
What about the other missing countries? I decided to write a polite letter to my Slowly team contact, and inquire about it. And sent it via DM in X, previously known as Twitter, to their corporate account.
“Hello J.,
Good morning, hope all is well with you. I wanted to send a quick message, in regards to the newly issued 'Jollof Rice' stamp, which is a West African, multi country issue.
We had researched it when creating the Slowly Stamps Wiki page for it, and I was expecting to see it in a few countries. Now it is out, and I think it is availble in 3 of them – Nigeria, Senegal and possible The Gambia?
The wikipedia page for Jollof Rice is excellent, and it mentions Ghana as a prominent location with this dish in their cuisine, as well as others. The page is here : The page is here.
A couple of relevant quotes :
“West African countries typically have at least one variant form of the dish, with Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cameroon particularly competitive as to which country makes the best jollof. In the mid-2010s this expanded into the “Jollof Wars”.”
French language countries also have 'riz au grass' in their cuisines, which Wikipedia mentions as a variation of the dish :
“In French-speaking West Africa, including Beninese, Burkinabé, Guinean, Guinea-Bissauan, Ivorian, Nigerien, and Togolese cuisines, there is a variant called riz gras or riz au gras, which translates to “fat rice”, a reference to the short-grain rice usually used in the dish. Riz gras typically includes additional vegetables such as eggplant, carrots, and/or cabbage.”
Bringing this to your attention, maybe you can pass it on to the relevant person(s)? And maybe they could consider opening it to some other West African countries now as well.
Thank you, all the best...
Yann2.”
This post will be updated with any comments
...if I receive a reply. 😉
I am glad this incident gave me the inspiration to write this, which is really a Blog post in development.
On the question of geo distribution of stamps
I have written in commentaries in various places, and even a complete Blog page, specifically about the number of stamp issues per country or per geographical area.
Many other Slowly users have mentioned this, and we have a dynamic page on the shared spreadsheet which tracks ALL the issues per country.
A number of countries have large number of stamps, and in comparison that can appear unfair. In terms of geographical area, the South Asia region is richly endowed, right? 😕🙄
The top location is currently the United Kingdom
And the stamp count unfortunately is even higher than the registered total – as the UK component areas include stamps with Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland country codes (as well as some of the small Channel Islands which got their own Castle issues).
Africa in general is very light on issues
And some of us have made efforts and proposed new stamps for the continent. Some worked, like the proposal for 'Car Rapide' in Senegal, and the issues for Democratic Republic of Congo and others.
A quick graph can convey a sense of how Slowly stamps distribution varies so widely. Light cream coloured areas are low numbers, and red ones are richer.
Source : our stamps tracking shared worksheet.
Hopefully, the Slowly team people will recognize that Jollof Rice is a cultural asset in more West African countries, and open the stamp for users in more of them.
Help Wanted in our subReddit!
My good friend Educational_Ad (aka Mapuo33) for a long time posted in our SLOWLYapp subReddit all the new issues as they were released. A thankless job, mostly, and turns out they will no longer perform this job; we are open to anyone who would like to volunteer for the task.
For many people who like the Slowly stamps and try to collect them, our release posts are likely the best source of information currently available. I was a bit surprised on finding posts in the Facebook Slowly Stamps collector's group, pointing directly to my own big, monthly release posts – on Reddit. 😎👍
SLOWLY staff get on the action
Recently it appears Kevin Wong noticed them too – as the SLOWLY peeps themselves started doing a similar post in the 'Changelog' section of their Feedback site.
Russian Cousin pointed that out, and I had seen them – 3 or 4 months of releases crammed in their Changelog in mid October 2023. Screenshot of their 'August 2023' post:
A nice feature on these posts is their inclusion of links to the original user proposals – in case the stamps were developed based on user requests. Well done. 😎
Famous Last Words
This post is dedicated to my friend Mapuo33, who has greatly contributed to both our subReddit and our WIKI project. Thanks, friend. 🙂👍
Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.
Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.
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