The people in my pelt
I feel most colored when thrown up against a sharp white background
– Zora Neale Hurston
the people in my pelt
wear floral uniforms with matching doeks
and rock white babies in expensive prams
while their mothers sit in pta meetings,
and near hockey fields, cricket fields
smoking Madison, cheering their older kids on
the people in my pelt work in gangs
blue overalls and black gumboots
they grade the land into neat green fields
using lawn rollers, they answer to names
like lance and john uttered by mouths
decades younger than theirs
the people in my pelt move in silence
one man, a teacher, comes in weekly
wears a frayed suit, his cataract blue eyes
swimming in old age to teach a required language
mangwanani vana, the call
mangwananivabepswa,
twenty four wooden voices respond
in grade four we were still learning amainababa
the people in my pelt move with fear
I try to appease mean Mrs XXXXX
who tells me not to act like a person
from the compound or something
when she catches me horsing around
my friend, Lorraine, dark like night
tells everyone her father is white
Translation:
mangwanani vana –good morning children
mangwanani VaBepswa – good morning Mr Bepswa
amainababa – mother and father
“compound” – an area containing living quarters for farm workers, often squalid.
bronco
bronco (brong′kō), noun a western American horse that is not perfectly tamed. [from Mexican Spanish: wild/half-tamed horse, from Spanish: potro bronco (untamed colt) from Latin: broccus (wild)]
1. walk quietly
2. don’t act like a baboon
3. don’t act like you live on a compound
or something
4. act civilised
5. tell your mother I want that hair plaited,
I don’t care if it’s relaxed or whatever
mustang
mustang (‘mΛstæŋ), noun an animal that strays [from
Spanish mesteňo (feral, stray, undomesticated) (from
Latin mixta (animals with unknown proprietorship)]
Mestenga noun, the girl who has to
hesitate before she speaks because she must doublecheck
that she is thinking in the correct language so
that her words are not misconstrued. For instance, she
must speak loudly in Shona or else, she is gossiping, but
when she speaks English it must be soft and ‘civilised.’
Mestenga noun a girl of vague ownership: wild, adrift.
Belongs to you but not entirely.
boycott ( ́bͻΙkɒt), verb to sever contact or
association as a form of protest.
rejection (rΙˈdʒɛkʃ(ә)n), verb refusal of an idea.
(In which our mestenga fails to absorb a new
language. She catches nouns but is too unsure
of verb forms to attempt full sentences)
when your tongue refuses to wrap around a language,
it is because:
a. you are afraid to hear what they say behind your
back
b. you are self-conscious
c. you’re overly sensitive
when the teller in the shop gives you poor service after you
respond to vernacular in English, it is because
a. they are xenophobic
b. they think you’re classist
c. you’re overly sensitive
when classmates speak over you, it is because:
a. they forgot you can’t hear
b. they forgot that you were there
c. you’re not supposed to hear
d. you’re overly sensitive
The dance of the mustang
but are you tired of apologizing
for being all the lines that tether you?
for occupying all the geographies that can’t hold you?
remember this:
there are different ways to say a thing: with hands, with faces, with song
I spoke with a foreign man once
I did it with my eyes
I said the word and
Let it hover
they’ll tether your tongue like they tether the geldings,
but you remain
unbroken mustang
see how other mustangs move?
they gallop
see how they gallop?
they run
and how do mustangs run?
With the wind.
Tariro Ndoro is a Zimbabwean writer. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Rhodes University. Her poetry, essays and short fiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best New African Poets Anthology, Cyphers, Fireside Quarterly, Oxford Poetry, and SAND Literary Journal. Tariro has been shortlisted for the BN Poetry Prize, the DALROPoetry Prize and the Intwasa Short Story Prize; and was selected for Iowa University's International Writing Programme.