ISSN: 1570-0178 Volume 10, Issue 5 (8 October 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 Four

Text Four, recorded March 27, 1973 with Kazembe Tumbuluka Bernard, a wood carver, inside and outside the Chenge work shop in Lubumbashi.

Swahili text and English translation

Notes

¹ Kazembe is carving what he calls kichwa, lit. the head, of the eye: the pupil.
² We are off to a rocky start in this conversation. What I am told is quite clear but difficult to render in translation. For instance, Kazembe makes an important distinction when he switches from the French loan word histoire, a general term for story, to arisi, the local term for stories that are fables, parables, legends, and so forth.
³ The interjection eh?, translated as "right?", is a pervasive feature of Kazembe’s speech (and not of his alone). Like the negative phrase si caméléon? isn’t it a chameleon? (see an example in paragraph 1, many others follow), it is a discursive-rhetorical device whose function seems to be to maintain contact with the interlocutor, hence my equally frequent response "mm." Since the semantic value of the pair eh?/mm is close to nil (nothing is really asked, nothing answered) this poses a problem for translation. While the interjection could simply be left out without affecting the content/meaning of the exchange, not to represent it in this translation would have suppressed a stylistic feature, a kind of antiphonal call-and-response that is typical of story-telling and conversation in local Swahili.
⁴ In local Swahili this is the current term for chameleon, variants I heard were (ka)lufwilim(u). I am unable to trace its origin (I did not find it in Luba and Bemba dictionaries).
⁵ Throughout this conversation I use the French phrase c’est ça much like "yes" or "mm" as an interjection rather than emphatic affirmation (see also the preceding note).
⁶ There are many passages like this where Kazembe both tells and shows me what he does and how he does it. To translate indexical communication is notoriously difficult, certainly if the aim is to keep the translation as literal as possible. In some cases our exchange will require descriptive and explanatory commentary (occasionally given by Kazembe). The reader should supplement the text with images, keeping in mind that the work talked about here is the carving of a relief-panel: figures project from a flat background (Kazembe says muntu, human being, and fond, bottom).
⁷ The French terms menuisier and menuiserie Kazembe uses throughout this exchange mean carpenter and carpentry but the work referred to is furniture making. The owner, Chenge Kanuto, calls it ébénisterie, cabinet-making, of which carving and carpentry are parts.
⁸ As explained in note 6, Kazembe shows rather than explains what he does, but the gist of this passage is fairly clear: When carving wood, the tools used to shape the features that will stick out in a relief must be directed against the grain. This becomes trickier the closer the carver gets to the fine detail. If the tool is worked with the grain pieces larger than intended easily break off and this can ruin the entire panel (gluing such pieces back on would have been below the high standards of Chenge’s).
⁹ Kazembe lets me know that he overheard a similar conversation I had with his colleague Léon Makelele.
¹⁰ I take the verb form Kazembe uses, banakana, to be the local pronunciation of banaagana, derived from –agana, agree mutually.
¹¹ The same term, mbao, is used for a single board and for boards put together to make a panel.
¹² Kazembe calls it kibasa, a Luba term meaning bench, seat (Van Avermaet and Mbuya 1954:54).
¹³ "Plank" is my translation of lubao, lit. a big piece of wood. The prefix lu-, often used in local Swahili, comes from Luba where it has an "augmentative" meaning (Van Avermaet and Mbuya 1954:372).
¹⁴ I am unable to translate the phrase Kazembe uses here: aliungapo, from the verb –unga, to join, plus the demonstrative suffix –po, there. Literally, it would be "he joined here."
¹⁵ This exchange was caused by my failure to catch the meaning of the verb kuvimba right away. The entire passage about the carpenters’ work documents difficulties we had with his explaining and my understanding the explanations
¹⁶ In the usual dictionaries I could not find an English gloss for montants that seems to fit the context. Closest comes "posts," the upright parts (legs, corners, sides of panels) of furniture. For mortises and tenons I found an excellent entry in Wikipedia
¹⁷ I had "parts" in mind when I asked about parties. Kazembe seems to have taken this as a question for phases of the production.
¹⁸ Here, too, we have a slight linguistic problem. We had used the verb kupakala earlier. Now I stop to get the meaning more exactly. According to the Stanard dictionary, kupakala means "to apply, spread, smear on, any substance." Kazembe tells me that it is short for coloring, putting on penti, a local term derived from English (probably via Fanagalo, the work language used before it was replaced by Swahili).
¹⁹ As I remember it, we were sitting down outside on a pile of scrap lumber.
²⁰ The term Kazembe uses is bamankisi, here carvers of nkisi (it could also mean "people involved with nkisi). In Luba and many other languages it signifies the sort of figurines or statuettes that used to be called "fetishes" (see Van Avermaet and Mbuya 1954:258-60 about the complex meaning of the word). Here the reference is to independent artists and to producers of "tribal" art.
²¹ Literally he says saa moya, for one hour, probably it was a slip. I wanted to say siku moya, one day, once.
²² This is what I hear on the recording; I have not been able to find information on that school (in Kalemie).
²³ I had started to put basic information about each of the workers (age, place of origin, family situation, schooling, job history, etc.) on file cards and was checking whether Kazembe’s was among them.
²⁴ Chenge Kanuto, his boss and owner of the shop.
²⁵ I started with a question about school but interrupted myself, asking about his family situation.
²⁶ Difco was a large car sales and repair company.
²⁷ "Boss" has been my translation of patron; here Kazembe call him mukubwa, a term of respect for which I cannot find a single gloss in English.
²⁸ It is difficult to make sense of this sentence. The verb form could also be translated as "I write her a letter." Kazembe begins to speak in general terms ("we black people") but then he gets to his own children and the problems he has getting them married. But why the singular addressee of the letter? From the following it is clear that he tells me how difficult family obligations make it to start one’s own business.
²⁹ Lit. a likuta, singular of makuta, the smallest coin. Fifteen Makuta was about the price of a bottle of beer at the time.
³⁰ I interrupted Kazembe because I realized that I had met his older brother in Kolwezi where he was a member of the Jamaa movement.
³¹ The French term avant, before, was often used without a qualification ("before what"?). In many contexts, especially when talk was about the availability or quality of equipment or the reliability of services, it meant "before Independence." Kazembe parodies this usage.
³² This is one of several exchanges in this conversation (and in many others) that looks rather meaningless in translation because it was performative rather than discursive. We did not "say" anything but kept the dialog in a kind of holding pattern until another question took shape.
³³ Lit. Kazembe says "I must enter by twos" in the transcript.
³⁴ That is how I understood the term adhabu when I used it.
³⁵ The traditional rival teams in Lubumbashi, TP Mazembe and Lupopo, popularly know by the names they had in colonial times, Englebert and St. Eloi.
³⁶ There may have been a genuine misunderstanding here, caused by my using watoto, lit. children, in the general sense of "young people" whereas Kazembe thought I meant his small children. More likely he was pulling my leg, giving me a demonstration of kidding around (kublaguer). Polysemy in local Swahili is a ready source for linguistic joking.
³⁷ This sentence seems to interrupt his account of instructing a newcomer. I take it to be an aside; Kazembe remembers his own apprenticeship and tells me that he teaches by passing on what he learned from the master. Ownership of skills and styles was a topic that often came up in conversations with Lubumbashi artists.
³⁸ Raymond Mwape, one of the carpenters, was a Bemba, born in the chiefdom of Kazembe. Kazembe was a legendary Lunda chief who established a "kingdom" east of the Lunda state among Bemba-speaking peoples. In colonial times it became part of Northern Rhodesia/Zambia.
³⁹ Nyari is classified as a Sudanese rather than Bantu language. It is spoken in the Ituri province of the Congo.
⁴⁰ Kazembe laughs in response to an unspoken insinuation on my part – he was the shortest person in Chenge’s shop.
⁴¹ I almost never use the appropriate prefix ki- with Swahili. Kazembe may have wanted to remind me of the correct form.
⁴² I had heard this piece of linguistic humor before. The underlying assumptions are, first, that "chachacha" is a "correct" onomatopoetic term, imitating the air brakes of the buses; second, the joke plays on the emblematic opposition between ki-/ tshi-, as in Kiluba vs. Tshiluba, the language of Luba-Katanga and Luba-Kasai respectively (Lamba and Sanga also are prefixed with ki-, Bemba can have either ki- or tshi-). Pronouncing the name as kyakyakya instead of chachacha marks a speaker as a little dim-witted; he doesn’t get it right and becomes an object of ridicule. There is a history of ethnic strife between Katangese and Kasaians behind this.
⁴³ I used the possessive pronoun yake, which could be "his" or "hers".
⁴⁴ This is a little confusing; as the sentence that follows shows Kazembe meant something like "and my Christian name is the same as his."
⁴⁵ This is a gloss for the verb -panga Kazembe uses for name-giving. I was not familiar with this term and wanted him to clarify its meaning.

[Introduction]

[Text One]

[Text Two]

[Text Three]

[Text Four]

[Text Five]

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