Binte Eidris

There's a garage in my head bursting its bricks with bent Popoids, Scalextric racetracks to anywhere, Polaroid cameras, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines and books about The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Talk-Back Tracy and a magnetic chess set are stacked on top of the Dinosaur! magazines I'd collect years later (every fortnight) along with the photographs of leapfrogging at Zoo Lake Sunday picnics.

Eighteen years later and this is all I feel I have of Daddy; these the only things palpable; toys and gadgets, and a father seen through the curtains drawn by a five-year-old.
I can still scribble a stick-people nuclear family gathered in the garden of a house with mattress-spring smoke pouring out of the crooked chimney.

I wish I knew more of my father, beyond the crayon renderings of a child. Six-and-a-half-years with him and Daddy was this fantastic bearer of amazing things; a doll that repeated everything you said when you pressed a glowing red heart on its palm and a little sewing machine that really stitched. Daddy was fun and hugs and there and all things magic until he started getting sick.

And when he got sick, I got scared. Daddy was strange, quiet and convulsing on the floor of the kitchen at the house in Azaadville.
This is all I knew. Happy, then not. Things are that simple to a child.
And when he passed away on that Boxing Day in 1989, the world suddenly got a whole lot more complex.

Now, I'm scant months away from becoming a wife. I need Daddy now more than ever. But it's a funny sort of longing, seeing as I never knew the man behind the Daddy-mien. Any suggestion of what our interactions would've been like can only be nebulous. Would we have got along as adults? Would I have grown to share his ideals? What were his ideals? I know he never missed salaah, even towards his end he'd offer prayer five times daily from his bed, his eyelids closing in submission for each sajdah his body could not perform. I know he was easy-going and had an ear for every stranger's problems. I know he read Robert Ludlum. I know he loved gadgets. I know little things, but I'll never know a lot of things.

Verily we belong to God and to God we return.

Eish, lyk is this a treatise on twang? Yah neh?

Do you find that you sometimes subconsciously emulate the tonal inflections of the people you speak to?

The phenomenon of 'twanging' (the word itself is a souf-efrikanism I believe) is best explained by the action of adapting your natural accent to mimic the one of the person you're addressing.
Twangers are derided by their critics for aspiring to sound more 'upper-class' than the dictates of their social status [squared] quo, with commentary running along the line of "Why you talking like a white?".

So far, thirteen years of democracy in SA is just a band-aid on the schismic gashes left by the idea that each racial group be left to develop along a path set by white supremacists. With that as our baggage and legacy, our fully heterogeneous society makes up a chorus so varied and rich, that South African Accent in itself is a misnomer. Our voices bump up against each other everywhere. It's this huge conversation, and here and there, we encounter the Twang.

I twang. And I only realised it after I listened to an interview I recorded. It was with gag-disbelief that I heard my voice outside itself, "Yawh, That's true."
I said "Yawh", the way most white south africans would.
Not "Yah", the way most indian south africans would.
It wasn't a conscious act. At no point, did I commit to thinking, "Ok, I'm interviewing the woman the Sunday Times billed as South Africa's richest. I can't show my 'jaat'* here."
And it's not just 'talking White'. I've since noticed I adjust not only to accent, but also nuance, pace and cadence of the people I speak to, more so when it's a situation that requires engagement and earnest concentration.

My mother twangs too, though she'll deny it. And when she speaks to elderly indian women, she lapses into indian-aunty talk (when every fourth word is 'shame', regardless of the positive nature of what's heard. E.g: Your husband bought a new car? Shame, that's so nice, shame. Your daughter's engagement is on Saturday, shame, you must be so happy.)
I've heard friends and work colleagues twang. And I do not believe that anyone of them do it with purposeful intent.

When we converse with someone face-to-face, we mirror their body-language. When they sit with their legs crossed, we tend towards crossing our legs. Apparently, we do this to create a sense of empathy with the other and establish common denominators to smooth the interaction.
Perhaps this holds true for twanging. Some subliminal notion that if we sound like the people we want to engage, we create commonality?

I welcome your thoughts.



*gujarati for caste or social standing

Capsule Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

I knew that Journalist is a dirty word in Bob'stan.
But surreal, in all the ragged over-use of that word, is the only one that can describe the furtive act of scrawling "Graphic Designer" in the occupation field on the immigration card.

There are other things I learnt in Zim.

• I found that I could call on the power of GraySkull and prise a lift-door open with my bare hands after a power-cut had me stuck somewhere between the third floor of the hotel and oblivion.

• You will not find a single coin-operated vending machine anywhere in the country. The Zim$100 000 note is the smallest denomination accepted by Zimbabweans (correct at time of blog). It's also the first currency I've ever seen with an expiry date. The stupid tourist in me was overtaken by the novelty of being given Zim$3.5 million in lieu of ZAR30. But you spend millions in seconds, and all you have to show for it is the corny photograph you took of the notes spilling across your palms.

• I ate what looked like fish fillets and tomato chutney. I now know that crocodile tastes something like chicken, but not quite.

• Mosi oa tunya. Indeed it does. And it's the smoke that leaves you soaked and in awe of the sheer tenacity of water that cleaves through the earth to assert its path.
  

• The sunset over the Zambezi is perfect. That's it. Perfect. Not even a bunch of Indian guys yelling Hindi across international borders to their Babhis over their cellphones could mar the incredible all-encompassing 'Perfect' of the moment. And after over-hearing the 'baw majaa' comment to Bhabi, I know they thought so too.

Some visuals here.

passive agression and its practical application

Commune-living fast deflates the bubble of stoicism.
There lived amongst us one who seemed to consume anything that intersected with her marauding path. Some of it hearsay, most of it confirmed testimony; no consumable was safe.
I too had not escaped unscathed. But for many of the incidents, I did not feel the confrontation worth the effort.
Until I opened the grocery cupboard to find a measly trickle of concentrate pooling at the bottom of the Oros bottle, just enough to give a glass of water a pathetic jaundiced hue.
Still reeling from that discovery, I opened the fridge to find that all the margarine had been used, with nothing but feeble streaks clinging to the sides of the container.
This act of utter inconsideration and disgusting show of bad manners prompted me to action.

"Notes:
I assume it was the tokoloshe that used up all my Oros. I don't mind, since I'm sure the little fucker gets thirsty too.
However, it's only good etiquette to replace what you use or at the very least, inform the owner so that she may purchase more Oros, so that herself and other tokoloshes also have the pleasure of enjoying a refreshing drink.
Hugs,
Saaleha

Sidenote:
The Marvel of the Mysteriously Minimising Margarine. More tokoloshes at work?
Please forward your theories to me."

This exercise in passive aggression yielded a 50% return in that the margarine was replaced by one of the house-mates.
However, it was not the one with the locust bent who 'fessed up and the Oros issue was never resolved.
The marauder has since moved out.
Perhaps now the other housemates will consider it safe to liberate their groceries from their bedrooms.

where the smoke indeed thunders (pending wordy words)

Mosi oa Tunya

Press Pause and hold.

The Mighty Zambezi at her most tender.