Ouma Anna Visser

Translation of Transcription of a recorded interview with Ouma Anna Visser, conducted by Martin Mössmer, with Oupa Poon van Rooy
Location: Breipaal, Douglas, Northern Cape
Date: 10 September 2018

MM = Martin Mössmer
AV = Ouma Anna Visser
NvR = Oupa Niklaas (Poon) van Rooy
dV = Granddaughter of Ouma Anna Visser

MM We are in Douglas, Breipaal. We are talking to Ouma Anna Visser. Do I have your [AV] permission to make this recording? You just need to tell me so that it is clear that I am not coercing you – that there isn’t someone here with a gun [forcing you].
[laughing]
AV Yes
MM And do I have your permission to use these recordings, and to transcribe them?
AV Remember, I can’t speak it – the newspaper people’s pure Afrikaans.
MM No! I, ‘Pure’ Afrikaans…
AV No, I mean, the words all in their right place – my words are still a bit crooked [as the result of a stroke]
NvR No, don’t worry, we can understand you clearly
MM A hundred percent, don’t worry
AV Yes, a little crooked
NvR You don’t need to worry about that, you just need to talk chat to us, as you remember, as you feel you want to, about how you grew up
AV Look, we grew up differently, as you might say, we grew up ignorant [lit. ‘stupid’], but we’re wise here. We’re completely ignorant today, but in those years we were wise inside. I was a hokmeisie [‘female initiate’] in the hok [‘confinement enclosure’]. I went to school. I was probably in the hok for a week, while I was attending school. Your hair gets cut off, and you sit there [in the hok] for a few days. You don’t come out. Your food is brought into the room. And then on a certain day of this week, before you get taken out, they take rooiklip [red ochre], and then they uru [‘ritually clean’] you with it. To uru is to clean, the Griekwas call it uru. You are cleaned, by the oumas [‘old women’] – they’re all oumas. Then they wash you, until you’re gleaming. I strung my beads myself, white and red, I threaded little blocks of them. I wore them around my neck, like this, and like this, each way over my neck. And that evening, if they decide it’s time for you to come out on the same day, then the slaughtering [of sheep] begins [in preparation for the feast]. And that evening, all the old people come, everyone comes, they all come together –those that can– they all come together! Then there is feasting, and drinking. And not those nasty beers of today – homemade beer is what people drank then. And there is feasting and drinking. The people dance all night long. That hokmeisie, the old women go like this, they go take here out. Young men wait outside the door with their sticks, they wait here in front of the door. And then you come out, there are poles where they’re sitting, and you come and do this. Oh boy! Then the young men fall over each other, over you, and they take you back in, and they dance in outside the door, there is dancing the whole night. Without fighting, without swearing – things are very different today. That’s how we grew up. That’s how we were raised, not this other nonsense. And then I went to the river – the Vaal River. You go and sit like this, on your haunches. And two old women stand alongside you, with the little sticks. The [sheep’s] pelvis the old women eat the meat off it, they scrape everything clean off it. Clean. Then it is rubbed with rooiklip [‘ochre’], it gets put in a bag and bound up. And on that morning, that old woman takes that bone and goes down to the river. And as you are crouching there, before they hit the water, a particular ouma takes that bone and swings it around her head, she flings it, and you just see it fly [low whistle] into the water. And then she tells you that you are clean, and they hit the water with the sticks, on all sides, that side, this side, that side, this side. And they speak in their language [i.e. Xri]. Look, I don’t know what they said, they were speaking their language, the Griekwa language. And the thing is, the tribe, they say there is [one], but I don’t know if there’s a slang [Waterslang]. Have you [NvR] seen it?
NvR The Waterslang? Yes, it’s here and it stood up [out of the water], here at the neus [Vaal and Orange River confluence]. When there is that thunder, or that lightning, then it stands up [out of the water] there. Why I have believed it and seen it is because my mother told us about it. She was taken down to the river [as a hokmeisie], and when she got to the river they put a certain cloth over her, and she had beads on, and buchu. That cloth is the young girls sprei [cape or mantle ?]. We call it the sprei.
AV Yes
NvR And then they give her that thing. And that is what she said, she told me that people say that there is such a thing, there was, there is such a thing. Because then they came and took those beads off her. There were certain beads [around her neck] which they then took off.
AV Well, I had a little tortoise [shell]…
NvR Yes, the tortoise
AV …a little tortoise, you wear it over here
NvR The one with buchu [in it]
AV On your hip, you wear it. And here the old women are hitting the water. And by doing it the keep the slang away from you, so that it does not come close to you, so that it cannot come close by, then they keep it away, then they hit [the water], and the hit [it]. The water must fall like this…it must fall in front of you, like this…
NvR Yes…yes
AV …over your back. Then you are [have been made] right. Then they say, if that bone has disappeared, then the old women say that this girl is now clean, she hasn’t had any boyfriends. She is now purified. And that slang never bothers you again. In this way you come out [of the river], and are brought home, you come home. And at the houses we keep nothing of the things from the feast, it was all eaten the night before. And now the girl has to do this with the buchu [rub it in her armpits], and rub it into the men’s belly buttons, rub it in
NvR Yes [laughing]
AV And then the girl prepares drinking things, she brings drinking things to the people, she serves them –not food, drinking things– that’s how we were brought up.
NvR But as I understand you now, your parents did not speak to you in the [Xri] language
AV No, my parents didn’t speak the Griekwa language, my mother was a Griekwa woman, but…
NvR Yes, yes
AV …they didn’t speak Griekwa, you see?
NvR Didn’t speak it
AV There were certain [Xri] words
NvR Certain words yes, which they use
AV Uh
NvR Yes
AV Uh, |kammi [sic] is water
NvR It’s water, yes
AV And the Tswana say meetsi
NvR Meetsi
AV Water
NvR Water, yes
AV And if people want to say nasty things to you, they say “this biri|oos [‘Tswana woman’]”
NvR Yes
AV “This kaffermeid [‘Tswana woman’]”
NvR Yes
AV They say you’re an old kaffermeid
NvR Yes
AV You see? biri|xoos [sic]
NvR Yes
AV That’s kaffermeid
NvR Yes. And the, the boesman one, or the Griekwa one, that’s a kx’oos [sic]
AV Yes, |oos [‘woman’]
NvR Yes
AV |’haaxa|oos [‘troublesome woman’]
NvR Yes
AV !amku|oos [‘decent woman’]
NvR Yes
AV You see, just a few little words
MM What do those mean?
NvR You mean |oos?
AV !amku means a decent girl
NvR She’s decent
AV And |’haaxa [‘troublesome’] is one that is… [makes gesture]
[laughing]
I don’t want to be |’haaxa, look…
[laughing]
that’s a |’haaxa. Now that is when the old women say, “Hey, this girl is |’haaxa.” And here, the others, “No, this one is a !amku|oos, a decent girl child.”
NvR Yes, a decent girl
AV Her facts are in order [i.e. she has been initiated], d’you see?
MM Uh
AV That’s how I could [inaudible] I could speak of many more things, but I … (Hello)
NvR Yes
AV I can’t really seem to remember them right now
NvR And there where you used to, when you testified, shared, there are many women now who knead [bread], they don’t know the water [i.e. are uninitiated]
AV Yes
NvR That water, to… mmm…
AV Should I talk about that virtue…
NvR Yes, yes
AV …testify, what kneads [?] your virtue, out of her water
NvR Yes
AV And that water, you need to [get it] out, out, like sin-water. You knead it out!
NvR Yes
AV mmm
NvR Yes
AV I know many things, but I, I [laughs]
NvR No, we, we understand that’s the way things are, the two of us, we appreciate your depth of knowledge, your experience. Now, look, those who will come after us, the after-children of our children, they need to follow and listen to every…
AV Yes, of course
NvR …word, do you understand? So that |’haaxa-ness, they must understand that they are |’haaxa, they…
AV Yes, they’re |’haaxa
NvR …they must make themselves decent
AV !’amku, decent
NvR Yes. Like the way we used to sit, when we came to the fire, then we’d sit like that, that platsit [sitting on one’s haunches]
[laughing, tries to sit on his haunches]
they don’t sit like we sat – hear how my kneecaps crack!
(Man) Ja
[laughing]
NvR Now, look, they don’t sit when they come to a clean yard [outside a house, next to the skerm, where people sit and socialise], to the social area, the way we used to sit. You would sit on your haunches
AV On your haunches
NvR And you wouldn’t be offered a chair, but today’s children are
AV On your haunches, sitting on your haunches with your kneecaps up, on your haunches
NvR And when you platsit, you crouch, and if a lion were to come, you’d be able to see it and run away as it roars… [laughing] Those who sat like this, they would sit with their food bowl, and if the lion were to come then they could jump away, so that they could flee
AV Easily
NvR Yes
AV Move quickly
NvR Quickly. But now they get given chairs to sit on. Now you see, Ouma Anna, this is the thing, how we grew up, this is what we’d like to know about. So that these upstarts, these new children, so that they can know. That’s why we must raise them, in this way. They must be ‘made old’ [i.e. adults] now.
AV Well now, those two old Bloukop [surname] women who have passed away, I warned them once, but they tried to initiate a girl, but I told them, “You’ve become ignorant, you don’t know [how to do these] things anymore.” Like the meat [from the feast], it should not be kept
NvR Shouldn’t be kept
AV I see that people today put it in their fridge, no way
NvR Now that’s the history, that’s a real piece of knowledge, that many don’t know about now
AV That meat isn’t kept, today, not tomorrow, is when it gets eaten
NvR Eaten
AV That girl, the one of Moes [personal name]
NvR Yes
AV D’you know this story?
NvR Yes
AV They walked that child into the river, and she died in the water
NvR In the water
AV That’s when I told them, they’ve become ignorant
NvR They’ve become ignorant
AV They don’t know the [right way to do] things anymore
NvR That girl had already come to take my daughter [to be initiated], but then I think the spirit spoke to her, with that one of mine, and said “Don’t”, and she [the other girl] said “Just let me use me your shoes”, and then I left
AV Yes
NvR She said, “I’ll give you five rand”, and it was that same day that that child drowned, no [inaudible]
AV I said that day, I went and told her “You’ve become ignorant…”
NvR And that thing [the Waterslang] exists!
AV “…You don’t do things the way that they should be done anymore”
NvR Waterslang. It exists! If I were to go to the river with that child, that girl, and if she doesn’t come out of the water, it causes trouble
AV Yes
NvR The wind comes up
AV Now just look at what they did that day at Saalrug. They went and celebrated that girl’s coming of age in the community, with things that don’t exist [in our traditions]
NvR They do it the wrong way
AV Now that’s all that I know, at the moment, I might be able to tell you more another day
dV Tell them about timekeeping –that was always so wonderful for me– because the old people didn’t used to have watches, they worked on the sun’s time. I remember [you telling me] that from when I was a child.
NvR Yes
dV They knew exactly when it was midday
NvR Yes! We courted by the sun, too
[laughing]
AV Now, see, pastor, I’m telling this for Henna. You’d know when it was one o’clock
NvR Yes
AV We lived on the farm
NvR Yes
AV The shadows would tell you when it was one o’clock
NvR When it’s one o’clock
AV Just so. Now it’s one. You had to know, because our father would come home, to eat. It’s one o’clock.
NvR Our children who live here, they don’t even know where Franshoek [constellation?] is, where the Voorloperster is, they don’t know where the Aandster [Evenstar] is, they don’t know where the Dagster [Venus] is. There’s many that don’t know. And they also don’t know how the moon looks when a woman isn’t, can’t be visited [i.e. is menstruating]. They don’t know about that either. Now that’s the time we grew up in. We didn’t live with electric lights.
MM Mmm
NvR There are hemelstrate [the Milky Way?], which many don’t know. [laughing]
MM Mmm. Ouma Anna?
AV Uh?
MM Where were you born?
AV In Maselsfontein [Mazelsfontein -29.051667901581347,23.57872009277344]
NvR Also on Maselsfontein
AV Maselsfontein
MM Maselsfontein? Oh, OK. So near Bucklands?
NvR Down this way
AV This way, this way, along the white road
NvR Down this way with the…
MM Oh, OK, it’s on the other side of the river
NvR On the road to Griquatown
MM Mmm?
NvR The Griekwastad road
AV Look, here. There at the … Masels- lies across from the neus [the Orange and Vaal River confluence] – here’s the neus, here’s Maselsfontein
NvR Yes, yes, right there
AV I was born in 1933. ‘33
MM So, you’re 85?
AV The twentieth of February
MM Mmm. And for how long did you live there, on the farm?
AV We lived there as children, went to school there. We lived on the farm then, and… Look, in those days it was, the… That’s when the Company [Griqualand-West Diamond Mining Co.], they owned the farm
NvR Yes
AV You know what the Company is, don’t you?
NvR Yes, the Company
AV Now there were farms, you see, where people had sheep, and cattle-stations, all over, and then later Maselsfontein was no more. Nineteen, nineteen sixty.
NvR 1960s, yes
AV Then Maselsfontein… Then the Englishman sold the place, you see? The Englishman actually sold the companies. Then everyone moved away and spread out, each in their own direction… We went to Griquatown, and then later came back in this direction, until we ended up in Douglas. And I worked for a long time in the [inaudible] Douglas. And then everyone came together again, and the farms were claimed, the Griquas claimed the farm – the Griquas, so to speak – put in a claim. And now it’s our farm once again
NvR It’s ours again
AV Mmm. I was actually born there
NvR That’s right
AV Nineteen thirty-three
NvR Thirty
AV The twentieth of February. I remember that date, as clear as daylight.
NvR Yes
MM And your mother and father?
[cough]
What was your mother’s maiden name?
AV Visser
MM Also Visser?
dV No, the maiden name, mom
MM The maiden name?
AV The maiden name is Visser
MM Also Visser?
AV Yes
MM OK
dV Isn’t it Minnies…
AV No man. The Minnies were my mother’s aunts and uncles
dV Oh
NvR OK
AV My mother’s a Visser. Christine Visser.
NvR Visser
dV Oh
AV My father is Frans Vos. Vos.
MM Vos
dV Oh
MM And, where did they work? Also there on Maselsfontein?
AV Maselsfontein. I couldn’t tell you where they were born. Look, like I said, we aren’t like today’s Facebook-children
[laughing]
I know my father came from Schmidtsdrift, see? They came here as children, and worked, and… As for my mother, she’s from Griekwaland
NvR OK, OK
AV The far western part of Griqualand. On past Maselsfontein, and… But I don’t know where exactly my mother was born, see? It’s not something I can remember. It’s the age, it [the memory] has left me
NvR Oh, yes
AV Because if my mother, my father, would come in and tell me “This is your uncle”, then you had to believe that he was your uncle
NvR Yes
AV I would not ask where he comes from.
NvR Yes, yes. The same as me.
AV Yes! Look, today [people say], “But who is this? [greetings in background] I don’t know this person.” D’you see?
NvR Yes.
AV No. We didn’t [do that]. If he’s your uncle, then that’s an end to it, he is your uncle.
NvR He’s your uncle
AV You don’t ask where he came from and how he came to be here, he’s just your uncle.
NvR Yes. Now, you see, I’m a van Rooyen. My mother’s father was a van Rooyen. And it was the error [lit. ‘short-circuit’] of old Morgan [the official who classified people and gave them Identity Documents], he just made me into a van Rooy
AV Mmm
NvR I am van Rooy. My parents are, my mother’s father is a van Rooyen. Now, I wanted to get my surname back, as I told you. I can’t get it back, because then I’d have to go and pay money [to do it].
AV No, just leave it the way it is.
NvR And I’m just the way I am now. I am a van Rooyen. D’you see?
AV So, this is probably all we can [talk about] here, I know a lot more, I have more that I can tell you about, how I grew up in the farms, and walked, how we ate Sweet Thorn-gum, how we ate berries. On that same Maselsfontein. How we milked sheep, black sheep, milked [them], and drank that coffee [with sheep’s milk]. Many things. But I can’t remember everything clearly. The stroke took a part of me.
NvR Yes. No, that’s alright.
AV And I can’t dance any more on my things [legs]…
NvR Yes
[laughing]
AV This Nǀaras [name?] my, my little baby sister, she’s passed away now. When she came out of the hok. That night we danced all night long. And I was pregnant with my third child. Danced all night, that night on the farm.
[laughing]
Lekker days, oo! Lekker days!
NvR That’s right, ouma.
AV So? Are you [MM] finished now?
[laughing]
MM Yes, I… Is there anything else you’d like to tell us, any stories or anything?
AV Pardon?
MM Do you have a story about something that you’d like to tell, about something you did or experienced?
AV When we [inaudible], we ate Sweet Thorn-gum, often not berries. Look, they call them kafferbessies [The fruit of Grewia flava], those brown berries.
NvR Yes, those brown berries
AV From the little pale tree
NvR The ǃung-berry, that’s what they call it
AV Yes. Saturday morning we go – on the same Maselsfontein – we go there by the, you [NvR] know where the birip [‘Tswana’] farm is, don’t you?
NvR Yes, the Tswana farm…
AV We picked berries there. Berries. And those things, I knew how to pick them
NvR pick them…
AV Berries. And d’you know, when you’re picking them, you can’t just put them in your mouth, haa! You won’t leave there again [because they are so delicious]
[laughing]
To put them straight in your mouth, into your mouth. Tonight, on that same game farm, there we milked the sheep
NvR Sheep
AV Those blue [i.e. black-headed] Dorper [sheep]
NvR Those blue Dorper [sheep]
AV Eh, thingy ewes. We milked sheep
NvR Karakul sheep
AV Karakul, yes. We would milk sheep, without fighting along the way, without swearing at each other. Today’s children can’t hold their tongues
NvR Goodness
AV They hurl insults, insults at “your mother”
NvR And murder each other, and things like that
AV Not in those years, we had lekker lekker days. We ate Sweet Thorn-gum in the trees along the river. Nobody here eats that gum anymore
NvR No, not at all. I see them looking at it strangely, hanging here and there. And then I say, “Hey, we used to eat this stuff”
AV Look at my teeth, it’s the Sweet Thorn-gum that made my teeth look this way
[laughing]
Gum. D’you know, I could talk a lot about the hokmeisie, but I seem to be losing things [memories]
NvR All those things
MM When did you come here to Breipaal?
AV In the seventies
MM Why?
AV Well see, I was married here, and you follow wherever the husband leads you
[laughing]
Wherever he leads
MM So was he from Breipaal?
AV We worked here, all around here, on the farms. Look, I worked here, for that Boer lady, Marie Badenhorst. You see, here just before the pharmacy you turn [right] up the street
NvR Up the road, yes
AV I worked there. Marie Badenhorst, Stoffel Badenhorst [her husband]
NvR OK
AV Worked there, and then I was on Maselsfontein for nineteen years. And then Maselsfontein was no more, then we came back to [work in] the house, see. Because each of us had to see where we could scratch out a living [lit. scratch out a nest]
NvR It’s true
AV That’s how we ended up in the Griquatown area, and then back to the area around Douglas. And the last place I lived was on Monterra [sic, Bon Terra -29.06097140738389,23.724632263183583], [inaudible] Josephs, Monterra. That was my last farm. And then I came to Douglas, but I never moved out again. That was my last farm. Monterra. I didn’t go work on any more farms after that. I did harvest work, this and that. Actually ruined myself doing harvest work for [inaudible] In the house, struggled in that life [?]
NvR True
AV You can’t just hang about
NvR You work, you work hard
AV That ǀamku woman, she can’t just hang about. Your fingers itch, you have to work, hmm.
[laughing]
NvR Oh, my, ouma Anna
AV I look at today’s young girls, and I say “Truly… today? Being young? No ways.”
NvR Indeed, the young man-children make me sick. And then you hear they have a wife [already]
AV Yes
NvR He talks about “my wife”
AV The cheek! [lit. ‘and how does his mouth taste’]
[laughing]
Ai, we had lekker, lekker, lekker days. Those were hard days, and they were good days.
NvR There were difficult times. But that’s what I mean
AV I think, one year when I was on Monterra, that Christmas. And my husband and the others, we [take turns to] throw [a Christmas party] for each other, see? That Christmas it was the others’ turn to throw [host] the party. And then I ate dunpap [maize gruel], that Christmas. I said to my child, “Here, eat [?] this is all there is for everyone”
NvR Everyone
AV That watery porridge
NvR That watery porridge
AV And now, today’s children, “Oh! It’s old bread” and if it’s not bread, “It’s old food”, heeey!
NvR And only from the day before
AV Man!
[laughing]
And [other times] we had meat to eat, d’you hear?
NvR Wow!
AV Thick joints, backbones. You’d have to bite it, and hold it in two hands [it was that big]. And then hard times would come again. Just like in the Bible, with old Ephraim’s wife.
NvR Yes
AV [inaudible] neither satisfied with the good, nor with the bad
NvR It’s also just about the good [times]
AV You have to accept [it], each thing as it comes, you have to accept [them]
NvR Yes
MM In the old days, where did they bury people? On the farm?
AV Yes, well, each where they live, there where they died, they’d be buried on the farm
NvR There’s a burial place, on the farm
AV But here in town you go to the graveyard
NvR To the graveyard, yes
AV Over the bridge, and buried. Back on the farms everyone that died on a farm was buried there, yes
NvR Buried right there
AV They were buried there
NvR And now the farmers say everyone must come and lie [i.e. be buried] here in town. Recently, three months ago, someone came from the farm, because the Boer didn’t want him to be buried there, and so he had to be buried here, in town.
AV Yes, that’s what they do. They do that. But people used to bury people that way, if you died on the farm… But we fortunately didn’t have deaths on the farms, see?
NvR No, not so many. We started [dying] here in town.
AV Yes
MM And, when someone dies, is something special done before they’re buried?
AV Pardon?
MM What do they do when someone dies and needs to be buried?
AV No, we just do church[es]. And then burial. Is that what you want to know?
NvR There are fridges here now, fridges [for the corpses]
AV Well, not in those days, you had to be buried within three days. If you lived on the farm, and a body came, if someone had died in the hospital, then the body would go to the mortuary. It would stay there for the week, until Saturday, and then the family would go and fetch it, to bury it [on the farm]. Like here. [Dead] people have to lie there [in the mortuary] until the Saturday morning.
NvR If they die at home, then they must lie from Wednesday up until Friday, and then they are buried. But if they die after Wednesday then they get put in the mortuary
AV They get put in there
NvR Then we have to bury them the following week
AV But they also say things are different today
NvR You mean with…
AV There’s ash-air [cremation?] now
[laughing]
NvR And there are all the, these things, doing things. There are WhatsApps, and Facebook and, oh, these things!
AV Do you [NvR] know how ignorant I am now? Here’s my phone
[laughing]
“Hey, whats-your-name, come here! Come put me through to a number!”
[laughing]
Hey! Lord, the things I have to do myself! And if you get the thingy, the thingy, the air-thing, to put it in or whatever, see? When you buy a ticket, the power [i.e. an airtime voucher, ‘power’ as in electricity]
NvR The power
AV [I] can’t load it. I’m too ignorant now! I did that whole [inaudible] myself, wow! And I tell other people, “I didn’t think I’d get to where I am now”, wow! But I mast be thankful
NvR That’s true, just be thankful. Yes, ouma.
AV And as I sit here, I truly wish that, before I die, that there is a lekker hokmeisie [celebration] held, somewhere!
NvR Yes
Av Look, they don’t want to be in the hok these days
NvR They say they don’t belong in the hok
AV They says they aren’t chickens
NvR But they don’t know that they’re casting out their luck!
AV It’s dying out now, they won’t be able to come out of the hok
[laughing]
Ooh, yes oh my goodness. I’d prefer to do my things myself, I always walked to town myself, by foot, and I’d do my shopping. From Monterra I’d walk to town on a Saturday morning, and carry my things on my head back to the farm. It wasn’t a problem for me. And now? Wow!
[laughing]
I’m as weak as a chicken now [lit. ‘chicken-weak’]! But I should be thankful.
NvR That’s true
AV Be thankful to the Lord
NvR Thankful for everything
AV That’s how it is. Probably finished now?
MM Almost, almost.
[laughing]
When you were little, who still spoke Xri?
AV I said that I couldn’t speak it much
MM No, I mean other people, like your parents, or aunts or and uncle
AV Well, see, my mother didn’t really speak Xri to us, understand? She just used individual words on their own
NvR Yes, just here and there
AV Said words like that, and I remember those words now. Like ǀamku [‘decent’], when we talk about a ǀamku-woman or -girl, and the dance things
NvR “Pick up your xabakas [crockery, dishes], get your xabakas ready,” like that. Like that man who we buried recently, the people and the children gave him the name xabakas, and they wanted to know [why]. And then I told them, “Well, xabakas is crockery and that sort of thing”
AV Yes, lots of people… Now, the one of my woman [i.e. my daughter’s husband], he’s not quite right in the head, he doesn’t like that word xabakas
[laughing]
So I tell him, “No, it’s not a swearword, it’s dishes. Pick up those xabakas.” But he takes it as an insult.
[laughing]
I say to him, “No, it’s not swearing”
NvR Yes
AV ǀ’ammi is water, ǀoos is woman, birip is a man [sic ‘Tswana man’], nǀuib is fat, gǀanni is meat, those are the few things I know, but I didn’t learn it deeply
NvR Not deeply. It’s the same for me, just what my grandmother gave us, and she was a black woman. My mother-in-law gave it to us, but only weakly, and then she died
AV Yes
NvR But now, now we’re interested in it, now we need to learn it
AV Yes, even just single words
NvR Yes, just one thing
MM And if someone is sick, what does one say?
AV If one’s sick?
MM Mmm
NvR He’s kaesen [sic]
AV Yes, he’s ǀaesen, he’s unwell, he’s sick. That I remember, at least. ǀaesen
MM And a lion?
NvR No…
MM I ask everyone [how to say ‘lion’], but nobody has been able to tell me yet. I know what it is, but I’m waiting for someone to tell me
NvR To tell you, yes
MM If you say xam[mi] that’s a lion
AV Oh, is it?
[laughing]
MM But there haven’t been lions around here for a long time, nobody needs to know what a lion is
[laughing]
AV No, but one should know, and when you see one, one day, you can say “yeeees”
NvR “Here’s the xam[mi]”
MM OK, I’d like to thank you very much

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