ISSN: 1570-0178 Volume 10, Issue 4 (8 April 2008) Language and Labor Conversations about work, language, and life transcribed, translated, and commented by Johannes Fabian University of Amsterdam e-mail: fabian@pscw.uva.nl address: Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology University of Amsterdam Oudezijds Achterburgwal 185 1012 DK Amsterdam The Netherlands   Introduction Text One Text Two Text Three   Text Four Text Five

Text Three

Recorded March 10, 1973 with Pungwe Albert, a carpenter, at the Chenge workshop in Lubumbashi.

Swahili text and English translation

Notes

¹ This short first paragraph is an occasion to comment on features and issues that occur throughout this text. One is the repetition of both, (parts of) questions and (parts of) answers. This may look repetitive and tedious in transcript and translation but is a characteristic of oral exchange I want to preserve in this translation (it is a rhetorical device similar to call-and-response used by many speakers of Katanga Swahili even when they address individuals). Perhaps such repetitiveness is best understood as a means to keep the exchange flowing. Another feature is the frequent use of mm, an utterance that, depending on length, intonation, volume and probably a few other characteristics, can express assent, doubt, surprise, and what not. On the whole, it has two major functions: First, much like repetition mentioned earlier, is to maintain the flow, and rhythm, of the conversation. Second, often the mm response it prompted by the other speaker's intonation (rising, like in a question) or by his using eh? or mm? (roughly: right?) as a prompt.
² What comes out as a repetition in the English translation is due to the fact that here and throughout the text Pungwe uses a French phrase first and then adds a gloss in Swahili (or the other way around).
³ I think that Pungwe's response shows that he did he understood my question as referring to school rather than the order.
⁴ When Mobutu decreed that Congolese had to adopt "authentic" names the brothers Berquin (Barnabé, the painter, and Kanuto, the cabinet-maker) changed theirs to Chenge.
⁵ "Small fry;" In Lubumbashi the Swahili term is usually pronounced ndakala.
⁶ This is a gloss for an implosive sound transcribed as ts. It is quite common in Katanga Swahili and can vary in emphasis between my paraphrase and a more casual interjection such as "well."
⁷ The core meaning of vyombo (sing. chombo) is utensil. I had heard it as a word for a cooking pot, a vessel (or boat) but not for furniture, hence my question. Pungwe's chuckle, I think, signals his awareness of the term's many possible meanings.
⁸ An alternative translation could be "put it in a crate."
⁹ He did not understand my question because I had said (and say it again in the next exchange) beko, they (for persons) instead of biko, they (for things).
¹⁰ Pungwe took care to come up with this proper term for carver in "good" Swahili, followed by a French gloss. I acknowledge this by repeating the term. This happens more often in this exchange than in others, a sign that Pungwe was aware of my limitations. See also note 2 above and examples further on in this paragraph.
¹¹ The expression I translate as "local" is ya inchi, lit. of the country. Quite likely, Pungwe had the French phrase sculpture indigène in mind.
¹² This makes no sense to me because majivu means ashes. But it is possible that he wanted to say majivuno, showing off. In that case he made a distinction between "professional" carving (learned at school), a craft, and "personal" carving (coming from a person's ideas, as he puts it), an art.
¹³ The term (n)kisi occurs in many languages of the Congo. In Katanga Swahili (probably coming from Luba) it is used especially when multilingual speakers have the French fétiche in mind. But the meaning of "fetish" (apart from being compromised by a long history of mis-use) is much wider, designating all sorts of objects, not only the products of traditional woodcarving we are discussing here.
¹⁴ The term Pungwe used for weaving was kusuka. I repeated it because until then I had only heard in the expression kusuka nywele, pleat hair.
¹⁵ In Standard Swahili shoka means axe, in Katanga it refers to two similar implements, a hoe and an adz (see below, where women use a shoka to chop wood).
¹⁶ Pungwe says mikono, which can mean both, hands and arms. Women's "manual labor" is "handiwork."
¹⁷ I repeat the word because Pungwe used, ginsi (jinsi in Standard Swahili), a term I did not know at the time. Visibly this slowed us down in this reflective, sociolinguistic exchange about polite registers of speech. To anticipate an interesting finding from Pungwe's remarks: When he contrasts Lubumbashi Swahili as "impolite" with the variety he learned (see the examples below) this means that the difference he perceives is less one of variety or dialect than of quality and register.
¹⁸ I don't think "arguments" is meant here in a narrow sense; what he refers to is something that ethnomedologists called discursive strategies.
¹⁹ The word Pungwe uses is makali, a multi-purpose adjective. A dog that bites is makali, so is a sharp knife, or a severe boss.- Here and in the following I come to my limits as a translator: Pungwe not only quotes but performs his examples of Lubumbashi Swahili. He changes grammar and lexicon as well as intonation, accent, even facial expression and body posture to achieve the effect of a certain rudeness (or boorish directness) he considers typical of local speech. His laughter, in which I join him, does not so much ridicule speakers of local Swahili -- later he takes care to avoid that impression -- as it shows amusement and awareness of the theatricality of his own performance.
²⁰ Contrasts lost in translation are muke vs. bibi, for wife, wangu vs. yangu, for the possessive pronoun, atafika vs. atakuya, for she will arrive; atakuya would be atakuja in Standard Swahili (see also yua vs. jua in the preceding example).
²¹ The terms for wife Pungwe uses, muke vs. bibi in local Swahili invite two comments: First, in Standard Swahili, it should be mke, rather than muke; the syllabic prefix mu-, is a trait of what used to be called Kingwana or Congo Swahili. Second, the (Oxford) Standard Swahili Dictionary has an interesting note on the contrast between mke and bibi: "Used alone, mke means distinctively 'wife' in contrast to mwanamke [woman]." Preference for that term is explained in the entry on bibi: "a term of respectful reference and address to women, now fallen on evil days in some places because of its use to refer to concubines of Europeans," an inconspicuous note behind witch looms a social history of male-female relations at different stages of colonization.
²² To add to the local flavor of his example Pungwe used in the first instance mon cher, a familiar term of address; now it is the equally current dis, translated here as buddy. Both are the target of self-mocking among speakers in Katanga (especially the over-use of mon cher). But familiarity can be false or misplaced and there is correct or appropriate familiarity. The latter is expressed when a person is addressed dis. Like the shift of meaning in bibi (see the preceding note) the semantics of dis reflect colonial history. Africans observed Europeans prefacing statements, requests, or question addressed to equals and subalterns with the French imperative dis, say (my impression was that this was characteristic of Belgian French). In local Swahili, the verb form became a noun, something like "friend;" many letters I saw began with dis wangu, my friend. However, dis is not just a synonym for the equally current rafiki, friend. It is appropriate when two persons are in a relationship of kibengo (a Luba term, see van Avermaet and Mbuya 1954:63) of the kind often called a "joking-relationship" by anthropologists.
²³ In Swahili it says mwenzangu (one also hears wenzangu), a compound or mwenzi, companion, and -angu, mine. It can be translated as friend or acquaintance; depending on context it can also signify "a person from the same place or the same group I come form" or as "fellow" (one old man may address another one as mzee wenzangu, my fellow old man).
²⁴ There is a reason why we treat asikwende with obvious relish. The negative prefixes asi- is often cited as typical of local speech (especially of the miner's settlements). It probably is one of the few grammatical survivals (most others are lexical) of Fanagalo, the Nguni/Zulu-based work language spoken in the Katanga mines that was replaced by Swahili.
²⁵ Citoyen(ne) was the obligatory term of address under Mobutu. People obliged but, in ways that could not be faulted by guardians of political correctness, citoyen took on subtle meanings; it could be used mockingly or even as an insult (which, I think, Pungwe wants to convey here).
²⁶ In the text we have here one of the few examples of code-switching in the narrow sense that an entire sentence is in French, not just a word or a brief phrase.
²⁷ At the time 1 Zaire (100 Makuta) was worth 2 US Dollars. The prices were, in a small bar, about 10M for Simba (light beer), 18-20 M for Tembo (dark and strong beer), and about 8-10 M for soft drinks.
²⁸ I was tempted to side with Léon until I figured out that mushinji was Pungwe's pronunciation of (with a palatalized /d/) of mshindi, a winner.
²⁹ Literally it says: Also, even we (i.e. for us), there are kinds of Swahili they use there that we find difficult. A problem is the collective marker ma- (rather than vi-) prefixed to Swahili. If this was intentional the phrase may have to be translated as something like "groups of Swahili speakers."
³⁰ The contrast posited by Pungwe between kuongozana and kusikilizana reflects the common distinction between languages and vehicular languages.
³¹ What Pungwe pronounces as sikusudi must be sikuzuli in Standard Swahili, lit. I should not lie to you.
³² See above paragraph 7 and note 7.
³³ Pungwe says that a machine can have a kinyume kibaya, derived from mjume, "a skilled workman" according to the Standard Swahili dictionary.
³⁴ Pungwe uses the interrogative particle je, the meaning of which I did not understand. My impression is that it does not (or very seldom) occur in local Swahili. This explains the exchange that follows.
³⁵ I did not understand the verb kubali Pungwe used.
³⁶ Here Pungwe runs into difficulties with French.
³⁷ the "because" seems to make little sense here unless it is elliptic for "but I don't work there because.".

[Introduction]

[Text One]

[Text Two]

[Text Three]

[Text Four]

[Text Five]

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