ISSN: 1570-0178 Volume 10, Issue 6 (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 Five

Text Five, recorded March 23, 1973 with Mujinga Mbuyi wa Kalongo, known as Balimuacha, an actress and presenter on radio and television, at my residence in Lubumbashi.

Swahili text and English translation

Notes

¹ In Swahili I had mistakenly said "women;" I got it right in the following part of the sentence.
² Here I had trouble formulating the sentence; the reference is to a piece of improvised theater about work I had recorded with Mufwankolo and three other actors, among them Mujinga.
³ I am not sure where this was. Signal could refer to traffic lights or a radio/television transmitter.
⁴ Mujinga says bukweli, lit. "a state of truth," the local expression for a proper marriage, part of which is living together.
⁵ On another occasion Mujinga had told me that this explained her actor’s name in the Mufwankolo troupe: balimuacha, they left her.
⁶ Unless an English gloss suggests itself I shall leave this and similar designations (see below) untranslated.
⁷ A foyer social was part of the mining company towns in Katanga. Apart from a bar and dance hall, it had classrooms (for adult education), larger rooms for community gatherings or for showing films, and sports-facilities.
⁸ They were also known as assistantes sociales, a catholic community of social workers employed by municipal authorities and the mining company (or its subsidiaries).
⁹ Here and later I used eyo, kiLuba for assent, approval, or, as a question, for surprise.
¹⁰ Something is confusing here. I think what Mujinga wanted to say was that she would have preferred to work for one of the assistantes sociales.
¹¹ The official name was livret de travail, a document of a person’s work history (it is also mentioned in the conversation with Baba Ngoie elsewhere in this archive).
¹² Mujinga used French terms derived from English, speakerine and (a little later) speakage, which I translate as announcer though her job included that of a broadcaster and presenter of programs (see below).
¹³ Probably programme should here read as "column" (in a paper); later Mujinga had a television program with the same name, something like "Women’s Forum."
¹⁴ Kafubu, a river, became the common name of the Salesian mission founded on its banks. A printing press was part of the school system run by the order.
¹⁵ Under Mobutu "zone" became the official designation for urban divisions; the idea was to end colonial distinctions between ville, the city reserved for Europeans, and cités, African townships and workers’ settlements.
¹⁶ I am not sure that I have this right. Mujinga may have been saying that, while this was one and the same undertaking, it was under the responsibility of the respective municipal authorities.
¹⁷ The dictionary gives the meaning as "host" but under Mobuto, animateurs and animatrices were the singers and dancers, dressed in Party costume, who did animation, performing at public functions and Party meetings.
¹⁸ I repeated the expression Mujinga used, kupindula, turn or turn around, probably because I had not heard it yet in the sense of "to translate."
¹⁹ Mujinga actually said iwe, which concords with kazi. I think this was a subtle way of taking her distance form the MPR: it is the job, rather than the person, who must be "in the Party."
²⁰ As I remember, Kasongo was a (male) announcer and newscaster; Bibi Kawa was the stage name of a fellow actress of Mujinga’s in the Mufwankolo troupe.
²¹ My question was to invite Mujinga to tell me more about the organization of the MPR but she did not elaborate.
²² This was a reference to Mobutist propaganda for rural development.
²³ I asked again because I had not understood the word muno. It is the (rarely used) local form of mno, too much; the more current qualifiers for excess are zaidi or ya kupita.
²⁴ This is my best try at translating the subtleties Mujinga conveys, such as the contrast between kujua, as in "to know something" or "be able to do something" and kufahamu, as in "to be acquainted with/ know a person" or "be familiar with a place or subject." I think she had a grasp of ethnography as producing knowledge through experience. Notice that she also speaks first of lazima, the necessity, of a subject of knowledge, not of its meaning, purpose, function, and so forth.
²⁵ The term is mujinga, not to be confused with Mujinga’s homonymous name, which is current in many languages of the area as a name given to children born with the umbilical cord around their neck.
²⁶ Similar examples were given by Pungwe in Text 4 (and I recall them from many others speakers). The distinctive "difference" is as(h)i-, used to mark negation in verbforms. Its (probable) origin in Fanagalo makes the form appear emblematic for workers’ Swahili even though it is, as far as I remember, only attributed to children in the camps talking about their parents, as in Mujinga’s example below. Notice also that, despite her assertion that there are lots of examples, she has trouble thinking of any; the one she comes up with is just another negative verbform.
²⁷ Here Mujinga makes her point with negative forms that are correct but not idiomatic in Katanga.
²⁸ I did not know the verb kushesabia, to reckon.
²⁹ I repeated the question, probably because I was somehow savoring the phrase kufula manguo, lit. beating cloth (when the washing is done in a river, clothes are soaked, twisted, and beaten against a stone). Kufula is also what a smith does when he hammers a piece of metal into shape.
³⁰ On the recording the end of the sentence is incomprehensible. As the context suggests, Mujinga meant "men" when she said "women."
³¹ Here Mujinga signals assent by a sound produced by inhaling. Only women seem to use this (polite) form of expressing agreement.
³² I think muntu wa kabaila refers to a husband who has the means to pay for child care.
³³ Here and in the following the verb kusikia poses problems. Aside from hearing/ listening it can have many meanings that seem to cluster around two poles, perception (esp. sensual perception, hence kusikia can also mean to taste, to smell, to feel) and comprehension (understanding the sense of something perceived).
³⁴ This refers to recordings made in the Atelier Chenge, documented in Texts 3 and 4.
³⁵ Lit. I must read (kusoma) hear in contrast with kuandika, to write but also to record.
³⁶ I was pointing to a manuscript I had finished in 1972, just before returning to Katanga. It was titled "Anthropology and Interpretation. Essays on the Thought of the Jamaa Movement."

[Introduction]

[Text One]

[Text Two]

[Text Three]

[Text Four]

[Text Five]

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