Teacups!

 

I’ve just finished a fiction book dealing with gipsy wisdom, magic and witchcraft. I wasn’t impressed at all, but I couldn’t realize why until something happened…

 

Seemingly, a woman from Gaza province, in Mozambique, gave birth to three colorful teacups. Three empty, used teacups! For more than a week, every single Mozambican has been discussing the wonder.

 

In terms of magic, the African version is much more fun and imaginative. It’s also quite interesting how this type of nonsense spreads and moves people around here, some of them not even aware of the Olympic games in Beijing!

Animal Words

 

If you want to hear the true sound of Shangana, I guess you can rely on animal words. This is a language permissive to influences regarding new contexts, due to a question of crossing with other languages during its natural development as an instrument of communication.

 

The above conclusion came from the characteristics sounds people do when pronouncing those animal words. The bestiary universe is very important in terms of African creativity. Animals are mainly present in tales, fables and proverbs.

 

As a curiosity here is a short list of animal words and a couple of popular says recurring to them, not including pronunciation because either it’s like written or very difficult to translate into current known sounds:

 

Homu - caw
Chinckama - sheep
Huku – chicken
Kondhlo – mouse
Mpalo or ndlhopfu– elephant
Mpfundhla – rabbit
Nsokoti – ant
Nkwahle – lizard
Ngwenya – crocodile
Nghonyama or nghala – lion
Mbzana – dog
Mamba – specimen of cobra, it seems the word came from here
Nkuku – cock
Mamgwa – zebra
Bsinyambana – bird
Chiyambana – little bird
Chipichi – cat
Mbuti – goat
Mhinsi – hyena
Yiñwe – fish

 

Well, the above must give you an idea of the richness of sounds. Now for the display of popular wisdom:

 

Risumu ra khele – Toad’s song. Meaning that you repeat yourself, you sing the same song (khele is toad)-
Munhu wo rhula i nyoka – The one that doesn’t speak is a snake (nyoka).
Mfenhe loko yi gugile a ya ha titshembi – Old monkey (mfenhe) cannot trust in his habilities.
Mhinsi yi famba ni wusiku – The hyena walks during the night. Meaning: bad things can happen during the night.

Até Muzuku

 

If you know the right occasion for showing off your skills, Shangana can be an open doors language around here. As usually happens with the majority sharing the same curiosity for this specific language, the sooner you are into it you’ll realize that there are words sticking to you and words that are hard to assimilate. Alas, the same seems to happen with other languages too.

 

If one had to organize a short list of easy learning Shangana words, the below four would be on it for sure:

 

Famba – means go.

Buissa – means give.
Kanimambo – thanks.
Até muzuko – mix of Portuguese até (see you) and Shangana muzuku (tomorrow).

 

So then, até muzuku!

Tale For the Lonely One

 

When did he discover that he was all by himself? He had been like that his entire life, but the realization of his loneliness came as a shock and made him cry. Since then he has been living with the awareness of how lonely he always was.

 

People existed and events unfolded around him, but he went through life as if nothing mattered. Maybe the irrelevancy of people, facts and things came from their inability in changing his state of utter loneliness.

 

With each passing year, he had grown indifferent to his loneliness. He knew about people fighting the same feelings, but he stopped wanting to change the state of things. He stopped being exasperated or hopeful towards other people. He mastered the contradiction of being alone in the middle of a crowd. He ignored the suffocating anguish.

 

His loneliness grew and strengthened inside of him, strangely becoming suave and familiar – as any old companion should. Those who let loneliness grew inside of him were only able to create an abyss between him and them. He absorbed it, without drowning. It all happened quietly. That’s when he started to find some peace within his lonely existence. No one ever knew or guessed how lonely he was, except for himself, the lonely one.

The Perfect Man

 

Once she met the perfect man. Though, at that time, she didn’t realize it. It was only four years later that the recognition of his perfection came to her. Too soon, in her opinion, inexorably too soon!

 

Nevertheless, she shrugged and conformed herself with the thought that by then he would be just like the others she had met after him.

 

She met the perfect man for a second time. It was summer and he was tugging his wife along. The three of them had less than five minutes together, enough time for her to get an answer to an important question. He was still the perfect man and she doubt that his little wife knew how perfect he was, because in order to recognize a perfect man one has to lose him first. And she learned the sad truth: that the perfect man for her might be perfect for others too.

 

She could describe hundreds of things making him perfect, but at the end she always concluded the same: a perfect man makes a woman feel perfect too, makes a woman feel happy, makes a woman feel like she is the only one that really matters. He had done that for her and now he was doing the same for his wife. The perfect man!

 

She never met a perfect man again. Never ever! She even stopped trying to meet one. If it weren’t for him, she would doubt that such category exists. She would think that she had dreamed of meeting a perfect man. She would regard herself as a mad woman, only because of the ridiculous concept of a perfect man.

White Cow

 

Isn’t it interesting how different people can be? Picture an old couple sitting on the porch of their country cottage. He has been watching some kind of animal from a distance. He stares at it until he can recognize a caw. Then, he turns to his wife and asks:

 

“Did you notice a white caw in the middle of that field?”

 

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I did. But I have to tell you, my husband, that you are wrong: that caw is grey!”

 

“No way! It’s white. From here I can clearly see its white fur.”

 

The woman keeps silent for a good while. She looks at the grey caw lazily grazing on the distant green field. Noticing that her husband is about to return to the subject to reaffirm the white color on and on, she cuts him by saying:

 

“You are right! That caw is white! My mistake!”

 

Yep! People are that different: for each stubborn mind there is a clever, conciliatory one.

 

This is about a woman called Francisca. With her methodology, she managed to live without ever quarreling. One is left wondering how wise is to be like that? It doesn’t make you live longer, since she died at 45 of heart failure. Could her gentle, submissive manner be already a consequence of her weak heart?

Ruins of Dreams

 

By the end of the nineties and beginning of the new century, Mozambique experienced an incredible boom. People believed in the economy and invested all they could. Some of them even invested what they couldn’t: they went to the banks for capital and have been spending the last five years facing debt.

 

It is not easy advancing with the real reasons of such recession. They are many, but one of them has to be the existence of two different discourses towards the private sector: the words and the praxis.

 

So, what is left of the money invested in Mozambique during the turning of the century boom? Most of it disappeared: money, business and investor, all together. Some barely survive due to a weak alliance with the public sector.

 

But this is not an economical analysis. It’s just a note of how sad is witnessing the bankrupt of the private sector!

 

During the boom period there was a popular restaurant in Moamba, a small neighboring town. If you visit that restaurant, you will understand the meaning of this text. It’s perceptible that the owner of that restaurant had big plans. Today, those plans are only concrete ruins, emptiness and desolation. In that place, even cats and dogs seem to have known better times.

Record of Dive-2

 

JP’s holidays are almost over. Because of that (and a few others aspects), this has been a sad week for us. There is an atmosphere of senselessness about road accidents unlike anything else. Though, as a consequence of new things happening or about to happen, there is also a sense of excitement lingering.

 

Date of Dives: 12 to 18 of July.

Dive Locations: Angola, France and Mozambique.
Type of Dive: bell bounce.
Maximum Depth: 200ft.
Breathing Mixture Used: thin air.
Weather Conditions: sunny and cold.

 

Divers & Jobs: Andy learned that his construction project has been rejected due to a technical aspect, and now it’s starting from scratch; Jo calls from time to time, mainly to speak with JP; Paul has been busy diving for words; JP celebrated the first weekend with a big bite in his assets, even so, the size of that bite is nothing compared with the one left after the second weekend – and the irony is that the accident wasn’t drinking related but raining related (aqua planning); I believe NB, the divorced diver, is still in Angola; After Belgium and England, TD must be now in France: Vic and his Ponta do Ouro diver-brother met with JP during the week.

Tafula

 

Some words are a pretty curious thing. If I had time I would write about a few I know. Take for instance tafula. It is a musical word, used in most of local languages, meaning table. It’s not an original African word. It was imported from the English word table and the way I see it that story is quite interesting.

 

If you visit a common Mozambican house, you’ll discover that people don’t have furniture as we know it. This is not entirely truth in the cities, but in the countryside is still the norm. The most precious possessions for an average Mozambican family are: 1) Straw mats used for sleeping, eating, sitting, talking, receiving friends… 2) A pestle and at least two pans. 3) Jerry cans used as water containers. 4) Clothing. 5) Radio.

 

As you can see, no tables at all! Now the strangeness of this story is that throughout almost five centuries of Portuguese colonization, the word mesa wasn’t absorbed by any of the local languages. Why? In my opinion, due to two main reasons: a) Just a small percentage worked inside Portuguese households and had contact with tables. 2) Tables were something belonging to the Portuguese, not used by them. Why transport to their daily language a word referring to something they didn’t have?

 

A century ago, when the emigration flow to the mines started, the circumstances changed: A) A great number of magaiças (name given to Mozambicans working in the South African mines) went to South Africa where they had contact with tables. B) Eventually, they had to use them and as consequence tables became part of their lives.

 

How table was transformed into tafula, that’s another story. A lot of tongue twisting? Whatever the process, tafula is now a word spread out across Mozambique.

Announced Violence

 

Two days after the tae bo class alert to the crime rising, a spectacular shooting scene took place in downtown Maputo. Someone was held up by a group of gunmen and forced to give them all he had with him at the time. This happened in his office, during working hours. The armed response was a little slow, but eventually it did happen. From it resulted: a passing woman hurt by a bullet that hit her leg, the death of one of the gang members and at least the arrest of another. All this because of a little more than 300USD!

 

If this is a reflex of the presence of criminals expelled from South Africa, in the near future Mozambique could well have the cleverest crime force in the whole world because of the creativity they will need to survive round here. In fact, having in mind the different quantity of money circulating in South Africa and in Mozambique, they will have to do their best or return to the chicken picking pattern.

 

Violence seems to be growing everywhere, at the same rate prices and  speculation grow. A lady was recently kidnapped while walking with her husband on the Marginal, almost in the same place a still missed digital camera was stolen less than a year ago. After gathering the ransom money, her family could have her back. Crime paid off, so extra precautions are highly recommended from now on.