SMILEYS, BINNEGOED AND THE LEFT HAND OF KHETSEKILE BEATING IN DEEP ISIXHOSA
Tessa Dowling

The Sunday Independent
April 15 2007

Ooh vok, there is nothing so lekker as the smell of the braai at Mzoli's when you are vrek honger (Afrikaans: dying of hunger), or when, as Sirra (Sipho) put it, igeyiji iwile (township slang: the [petrol] gauge has fallen). Nkuja (Nkululeko) also had a nice expression for a rumbling tummy: ndikhatywe yinkawu (I am being kicked by a monkey).

"Masigawuleni!" (isiXhosa: Let us chop!) shouted Bra Vido as he started taking orders from his starving friends.

We always left it to Bra V to fetch the food. Number one, he was greedy. Number two, he was big and could shove to the front of a queue just by leaning on it from the back. Number three, he had an excellent memory and wouldn't bring you back a smiley (braaied sheep's head) instead of a steak.

So we all sat back, happy in the knowledge that we wouldn't be hungry for long. But that didn't stop us talking about hunger. "Eish, ketswere ketlala! (Sesotho: I am being held by famine!)" sighed Sis' Dikeledi, admiring her white-tipped fingernails while reading a message on her cellphone. "And me, I need meat, I cannot just eat pap like you makwenyapoone (Sesotho: maize-eaters = Nguni people)."

"No, you don't know what hunger is!" Sis' Dudu, who looked as if she hadn't seen a day's hunger in her life, thumped her stomach aggressively. "Inxele likaKhetsekile liyakatsa. (isiXhosa: The left hand of Khetsekile is beating hard.)"

"Oh my sister - you speak such deep, deep isiXhosa!" This was Bra Sirra, who mixed his languages so much he wasn't quite sure which one he was speaking at any given time and once famously asked his friend what the Afrikaans was for the isiXhosa word snaaks. Now he was so impressed by Sis' Dudu's manipulation of his mother tongue he actually asked a woman a question!

"Ithetha ukuthini? (isiXhosa: What does it mean?)"

"Iyhu! Wakhulela phi? (Where did you grow up?) EKhaltsha?" (Khayelitsha is sometimes referred to as "Culture"). Sis' Dudu acted cross, but really she was pleased to have been asked. "I wasn't good at maths but I know my hysterics."

"Um ... don't you mean 'history'?" suggested Gugu, who was currently working on her master's thesis on "The history of match-fixing in Langa cricket clubs". She had hoped that Hansie Cronjè would be her supervisor, but unfortunately he was late (dead). As Bra February had joked, "Naai, man, God was cross with Hansie. He said, 'Hansie, I told you to fly into George Bush, not into a bush in George'."

"Whatever!" Sis' Dudu finished applying lipstick to her voluptuous lips and snapped her makeup purse shut to signify she was about to give a short, informative lecture.

"The saying 'Inxele likaKhetsekile liyakatsa' goes back to the time of Bra Jan van Riebeeck. Khetsekile was a very greedy but also very clever somebody. He used to take food from the Dutch and promise that he would give them something in return, but he never gave them anything. His left hand was always empty. So when you are hungry it is Khetsekile's empty left hand that is beating in your stomach."

Thomas the German was so impressed with Sis' Dudu's erudition he asked her to write the whole story down so he could put it on his blog later on.

"Majafariki! (Sesotho: pork-eaters = Germans)" sighed Sis' Dikeledi, "They always love a good story."

Then we saw Bra V stumble back from the ordering queue, looking as white as a darkie can get - and horribly foodless.

"Eish, you won't believe this, my friends, you won't believe it!" He looked almost wild with hunger and disbelief. "A whole lot of parliamentarians arrived just before us and they ordered all the vokken meat!"

And he listed, in his best isiXhosa, all the forms of meat he knew, "All the umbengo (braai meat), izintso (kidneys), zibindi (liver), maphaphu (lungs), manqina (trotters), oosmiley (sheep's heads), ulusu (tripe), yonke ibinnegoede (all the innards)!"

Sirra was desperate. "Even the amacongwane?" (Amacongwane are those bits of meat that are usually only given to young, uncircumcised boys.)

Our waiter nodded sadly. Sis' Dudu stood up threateningly, a sinister look on her face.

Bra Vido looked worried, very worried. He knew Sis' Dudu went literally mad when she was hungry. And the hungrier she got, the madder she got; and the madder she got, the badder she got.

He warned us all of this, circling his finger near his head to indicate insanity. "I-cassette yakhe iqhawukile. (Township slang: Her cassette is broken = She is mad.)"

"OK!" Sis' Dudu fumed. "We are all going to march!" And because we were all so hungry, and generally fed up with politicians, we followed our leader and advanced on the huge table of noisy MPs who were stuffing their faces with our meat, chewing our bones, officiously scoffing our awful offal.

Then Sis' Dudu spoke, and her loud, impassioned (hungry) voice rose up above the noise, silencing the politicians. For once in their lives, they had to listen.

"Comrades! Welcome to Mzoli's. We are deeply grateful that you have bought all this meat" - she pointed to the huge pile of chops, steaks, sausages and binnegoed in the middle of the table - "to share with us and to thank us for voting for you."

She took the plate and offered it around to us, her faithful followers. I can't say we held back, but when we had all eaten our fill, there was still plenty left.

She put the plate back on the table, and then spat out the truth to the by now palpitating parliamentarians: "Hayi suka wethu, khawuyeke ukunyoluka! Inyama yonele uMbo nomXesibe." (Come on, my dears, stop being greedy! There is enough meat for the whole nation.)

Thomas the German was heard to remark later, as he told and retold this famous story, "It vos a bit like ze loaves und ze fishes".

"Or the manqina and the maphaphu more like," sniggered Bra February, "to put it in context, mos."