Waking up to the rain, on this morning of all mornings, this word is in my head. Usually, it’s accompanied – esikaNandi. In recorded Zulu memory, the greatest lamentation ever felt is idiomatically captured as “the lamentation of Nandi”. EsikaMadiba. Namuhlanje sikhala isililo sikaMadiba. isiLilo is the wailing, the lamentation, over the dead. It consumes […]
Month: December 2013
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umhlaba (k)awunoni
The earth does not grow fat. It eats and eats and eats, young and old, men and women, great and small. It has eaten brothers and fathers, sisters and friends and colleagues and mothers. It has eaten whole nations, and yet it does not grow fat. Just once, I wish that the earth would say: […]
It’s been a year. The paths are crowding over with the long grass, with puddles filling in potholes, with the imminent beachward flight of Jozi’s residents (and the inevitable binge of mall-cramming shopping preceding it) singing a cloying tension into the air. It’s been a year. A year of different tongues in different heads with […]