Women’s Clothes Vocabulary
It was a month since the Bandas had got news of the Mandas’ misfortune. A whole month spent in disseminating the story to whoever wanted to know more about the scandal. And they weren’t done yet. Boniface and his wife made use of any conversation to throw in innocent-like comments that would leave a mark on their interlocutors’ minds. Note this particular day for example.
As soon as her children had finished doing their afternoon chores, NyaMatochi shed off her role of supervisor. She went into her bedroom in haste. When she reappeared, she was dressed in an exquisite three-piece outfit bought by her husband the previous week.
“Ŵamama, you look so beautiful,” Bright, one of her sons said. He was ten years old but often talked to her like an old man. “Where are you going? It’s going to rain soon.” Indeed, pregnant clouds hovered threateningly over their house.
Without waiting for an answer, Bright ordered two of his younger sisters to take the clothes that were drying on a thin wire line and put them inside the house. He himself went for the chidunga, the big basket that they used to store maize flour for cooking sima. It stood erect just outside the kitchen, covered by a chiselo, a flat round basket that they also used to remove chaff from dry pounded maize. He lifted it with both hands and carried it into the house.
NyaMatochi stayed on the veranda and watched her children scuttling to and fro. They were all there except her first born son, Benard, who was in boarding school. He’d come back home for Christmas. His future looked very promising. She hoped that at the end of his Form 4, he’d go to university to become a respectable lawyer like Dr Emmanuel Mhone and not a politician like Mr Manda.
A frown appeared on her face when one the youngest children started screaming. What was wrong again, she asked herself. Couldn’t these little things leave her in peace? She then understood the cause of the commotion. The clouds had finally opened. There were wet drops on the soil that would soon turn into rivulets of dirty water, soaking the front of the house and making the ground slippery long after the rain was gone.
“Can we stay outside ŵamama?” five-year old Peter asked. He was her last born child and his birth had been so complicated that NyaMatochi had sworn to avoid swollen bellies for good.
“Stay if you want to. If you fall sick, I won’t be the one taking you to the hospital. Fill some basins and the big drum while you’re at it. At least you’ll be doing something useful.”
The children yelled with happiness and took off their clothes, throwing them on the veranda, and rushed back so as not to miss out on the fun. They went into the room adjoining the kitchen and brought out plastic pails in all sizes and colours. Some were brand new and some were old. The kids danced and tilted their heads towards the sky, letting the cold water hit their young silky faces while waiting for the buckets to fill before pouring all their contents in the big round plastic drum that stood near the high-raised veranda. Lusungu stood there with her mother, watching the amusing spectacle. She laughed and teased her brothers and sisters now and then but didn’t join her naked siblings.
Boys’ Clothes Vocabulary
“Why don’t you want to play with them? Ah, I know. You’re saving those little breasts for-you-know-who,” NyaMatochi teased her daughter.
“Leave me alone. You know I don’t like such games.” Lusungu’s embarrassment was obvious but it escaped her mother. “Where are you going this afternoon?”
“I have to fetch my national wear for Saturday’s wedding. My favourite tailor made it just for me,” NyaMatochi replied, glancing at her watch.
When the heavy rain turned into mild showers, she finally set out for the Trading Centre. She couldn’t wait to try her new outfit. It was a long blouse that was supposed to narrow at her waist before spreading out to reveal her thick hips. Its short sleeves would be puffed and dark-brown lace would be used to line the hem. The tailor had promised her that the design would also highlight her sensuous features, enveloping her behind so that it stuck out like a small anthill.
Boniface had bought her the fabric two months before during one of his trips to Tanzania. It was light brown in colour with leopard prints. NyaMatochi’s criteria were: stylish, original, impressive. The more she was stared at the more successful the attire was.
The ground was wet from the rain and the fresh smell compelled her to look for trees that had termites on them. She eyed the barks of the mango trees but none offered her the soil she was looking for. She’d have to buy some ground clay at the market to soothe her craving for soil.
The dirt road was wide enough to accommodate everyone. Children ran around her, leaving footprints of various sizes behind them. Little boys played with cars made entirely from wires and small twigs. Some girls played phada on the drier ground, the lines of the squares jutting out of the earth, beckoning. Farther on, a group of teenagers played fulayi. They used a small ball made of plastic bags that were heated over fire slowly, melting them until they turned into a round shape that lasted for a few games before joining the garbage pit for good.
NyaMatochi stopped to watch the girls play. She’d always loved this game. Watching this particular one brought those happy childhood memories back. There were two teams of four girls each. There was a plastic bottle stuck in the middle of a small heap of dry sand. One short girl was trying to fill it, while two taller girls tried to hit her with the ball. The distance between the hitter and the girl in the middle was of about three metres but the girl nimbly avoided the hard plastic ball, catching it at times and throwing it far away, taking advantage of this time to fill up the bottle with more sand. The other members of the team stayed behind the hitter to retrieve stray balls. When the bottle was full, the quick athletic girl in the middle started shaking it, removing the sand and when it was empty, she hit her thigh thrice with the bottle that had once contained Kazinga oil and shouted ‘win! win!’ in English and members of her team run to hug her, giving her compliments and giving her soft taps on her strong legs and arms. The losing team started quarrelling, blaming each other for the lost balls and missed opportunities. In fact, one of the hitters accused her counterpart of throwing the ball too softly so as to avoid hitting Takondwa, the superstar.
NyaMatochi left them to their bickering and when she looked back, the girls had dispersed. But she knew that they’d be back on the same spot the following day. That was how it was in her days and nothing changed much in the village.
Girls’ Clothes Vocabulary
Thembani & Sons; there it was. The brick-walled structure was sandwiched between smaller ugly shops with white-limed walls that had lost their initial colour, dirtened by seasons of rain and stray hands.
Mr Thembani was a well-known rich businessman with several similar shops all around Chitipa in which you found most household goods at affordable prices. The veranda of this particular grocery was very wide and there was a tailor on each side of the cemented floor. NyaMatochi’s tailor was on the right-hand side and there were three shabbily-dressed women already sitting on the single bench. Another uncommon woman was admiring the already finished clothes that hang on a wire string behind a foot pedal-powered Singer sewing machine. Her coarse hands felt the different kinds of material and her envious eyes roamed over the national wears. What the body couldn’t have, the eyes and heart could possess, so she owned all those clothes vicariously. NyaMatochi thought that her own manicured hands would do justice to the tailor’s work, not that woman’s farm hands.
The tailor was about to take the measurements of another lady. She was better dressed. When she turned her head, NyaMatochi recognised her instantly.
“Now, now, now. Are my eyes seeing properly, he? Look who’s here ŵaVinjeru,” NyaMwale said, addressing the tailor. Ah, so his name was Vinjeru, NyaMatochi thought. He always refused to give her his name. Just call me Atelara, he insisted.
“Ah ha! So your name’s Vinjeru,” NyaMatochi said playfully while climbing the three steps that led to his business domain, barely looking at the other three women. “NyaMwale, what’re you doing here? Vinjeru, leave my friend alone so I can greet her properly.” NyaMatochi adorned her biggest smile and the surprised tailor stood on the side while the two enthusiastic women hugged each other, laughing and observing each other.
“Ŵagirl, you’ve put on another new outfit today. At this rate you’re going to burn the whole village.” NyaMwale teased her.
“He, he! Look at you. What a beautiful lady!” NyaMatochi flattered her friend in turn.
“Enough of self-admiration,” Vinjeru said. “I have to keep working. Don’t you know I have to feed seven daughters and sons, not counting my three wives and an unborn child? So stop bothering me,” he joked. Everyone knew that he lived alone though no one knew his age. He was very secretive about his private life.
“He, he, de! Since when do you have a sweet woman cooking food and washing clothes for you? I can do that for you, you know, so you can make me the best clothes in Chitipa, even in Malawi. You’re so talented,” NyaMatochi said and put her hand on Vinjeru’s shoulder. He grabbed her wrist and pushed her hand away, very slowly, avoiding her piercing gaze, not wanting to embarrass her or himself. He took out a measuring tape out of his shirt’s pocket. The white flexible plastic strip coiled on itself like a snake.
Men’s Clothes Vocabulary
“ŴaVinjeru, why don’t you buy another bench for your favourite customers? I give you lots of money each month and you let me stand here like a thief. Just give me my clothes so I can go back home where I can rest like a queen.”
Vinjeru didn’t answer. He was measuring NyaMwale’s bust. He always did that at the end because it made the women feel uncomfortable.
“Where are my clothes Vinjeru?”
One of the three women gasped and NyaMatochi turned to look at her with disgust but failed to see what was wrong.
“Just a minute,” Vinjeru said flatly then continued. “ŴaNyaMatochi, your national wear is in that big carton over there. It’s just on top, you won’t miss it. You gave me 300 hundred kwacha in advance last time so you can now give me the other 300.”
NyaMatochi rushed to the brown carton, almost tripping over the three women’s feet and when she reached the spot she asked innocently.
“Are you sure it was 600 kwacha? I thought we agreed on 500.”
“All right, I’ll do that for you. You’re a very good customer.” He smiled and NyaMatochi smiled back, closing the unexpected deal. The clothes were in a big PTC bag. NyaMatochi took each item, pressed it on her body as if she was trying it and showed it to the people around her, waiting for comments and approval.
“Wow! Are you wearing that to Phindu’s wedding on Saturday?” NyaMwale asked, her arms on her hips, her mouth wide open.
“Of course, where else? I’m going to be a star.”
After she’d received enough praise, NyaMatochi put away her items carefully and slid Vinjeru’s money in one of his trousers’ pockets. Vinjeru flinched but remained quiet.
“It’ll be safe that way,” she said. “Ok. I’ve got to go. My kids are starving and that good-for-nothing-Lusungu will just sit on her soft bottom all day long, if her mother doesn’t push her to light the fire and cook food. But she’s not like NyaMoyo’s granddaughter. That’s the laziest girl I’ve ever seen.” She paused, waiting for some reaction.
“I’m not talking behind her back but I think there is something wrong with that girl. Have you seen the way she carries her water bucket?” NyaMwale laughed and NyaMatochi continued, targeting the other three women now. She imitated Tionge by putting the plastic bag on her head and walked awkwardly as if she’d fall down in a matter of seconds, making animal-like sounds at the same time. Vinjeru couldn’t help laughing.
“Ah NyaMatochi, you’re very crazy.”
One of the three women became bolder and addressed NyaMatochi.
“Is what I hear true about the Mandas?” You didn’t need to ask such a question to NyaMatochi twice.
“Yes, very true.”
“Mwe imwe, this world is cruel.”
“Poor ŵaManda. Imagine your own mkweni doing that to you.”
“Shame indeed on Dr Emmanuel Mhone. So he ran away with Pearson’s youngest daughter?”
“Yes, it looks like they’d been playing mummy and daddy for a long time. Shh, I didn’t tell you that.”
Babies’ Clothes Vocabulary
“Don’t tell me that that small Thembi slept with her brother-in-law. Mwe Chiuta mwe. What’s wrong with our young people nowadays?”
On her way home, NyaMatochi walked with a continuous smile on her face. All her acquaintances were greeted with joy. All questions were answered generously. She was just sad that she had no daughter old enough to marry the new bachelor. That’d have been the sweetest revenge. But as of now, she had Phindu’s wedding to celebrate. And she’d celebrate it in style.
***
Adjectives for Describing Clothes
Salt No More, an English English Novel (Level B1-B2) (Click on the picture to go to our Amazon store)
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