A Makua lesson in Nanua

I forgot to tell you the best part of the trip to Nanua (accent on the 'u'). In the afternoon, when we first arrived, I wandered around the village and found Deena sitting next to a Makua woman. they invited me to join them. The seat was an odd contraption -- a low bamboo frame criss-crossed with ropes. The whole thing was about 6 inches off the ground, and sagged in the middle, so that once I sat down, I couldn't get up by myself.

I asked the woman to teach me the names of things in Makua. We interacted in Portuguese, which didn't work very well, since neither of us knew how to speak it. But we both understood a few words. She seemed to enjoy trying to teach me something, but once I took out my little notebook to write it down, a young man came to help. He clearly wanted me to write down HIS words too!! If he said anything and I neglected to write, he made a stern face and pointed at my book, and waited until I wrote something.

He kept trying to say something to Deena, but we couldn't figure out what it was. I heard a word that sounded like carne, and commented to Deena that maybe it meant meat, but we couldn't figure out why he was talking about meat. But eventually we realized he was trying to sell something, and it was indeed some kind of meat. It was like playing charades. How big? sounds like? He made sounds that I thought was a dog, so I tried barking to check if I was right, and he barked back, but then said in Portuguese that it was not a dog, and made a snuffling sound that I thought was maybe a pig, so I tried grunting and he grunted back, and finally he was satisfied that we understood, but alas, we still did not want to purchase pork of dubious origin that had been sitting in the sun on the back of his bicycle.

Finally he said tchao, (goodbye), and I asked him how to say it in Makua. His response was suspiciously long.
Ki auroar owanuach oon oontu tootubue.
I kept trying to repeat it, but he was not satisfied. He got closer and closer and louder and louder, insisting that I speak with t he right emphasis, and drilling me on the word tutoobue until we were nose to nose, shouting in each others' face. Finally I got it right and he was satisfied, showing his pleasure by doing a complex elbow shake with Deena. But the happier he got, the more the woman laughed. I wondered why she had not laughed when I was practicing, but was laughing now that I got it right. I wondered what I was actually saying. I tried saying it again and got the same results: proud elbow bumping by the young man, and laughter by the woman, and by the circle of kids who had gathered.

Eventually he let on that Tutubue was actually the name of his village, and I had been loudly and proudly announcing:
Goodbye! I am now going home to Tutubue!
The laughter was simply because they knew perfectly well that I did not come from Tutubue. It was a great crowd pleaser. I'm sure that no white person had ever said that sentence.

After the Kahua lesson they brought out food. Yikes! I was so torn between the adventure and experience of trying it, and the concern about the germs that I didn't know what to do, but I followed Deena's lead. After all, she's a real missionary (in China). She was clearly planning to eat so I did too. The woman held out a gourd with water, and showed us how to dip our fingers in it, presumably to 'wash' our hands. I could see the dirt flowing off into the water, leaving our hands only slightly less dirty, but soiling the water for everyone else. At times like this it would really be better to never have heard of the germ theory of disease. I tried to sneak my hand sanitizer out of my fanny pack, and pour some into my hands behind my back, but I realize it is hopeless -- we are all reaching our fingers into the same dish.

The first dish was made of ground corn (nakoowoo-oh), patted into a round mound on the plate, sort of like an African version of stiff grits (seema). That was served with a vegetable dish made of some sort of chopped greens similar to collards (matapa). It was pretty tasty, actually. That was followed by a third dish, this one flat beans with chopped tomatoes. That was my favorite, although maybe I was just appreciating the fact that it was hot enough to kill the germs.