Women's Month Loads They Carry
It is Women’s Month and multi-tasking comes to mind. Only women multi-task because they carry more than men, literally and figuratively.
To carry something is thwa-la in Zulu. You say the first half like twilight and the second like luck. A pregnant woman u-thwele. There’s a proverb about how difficult it is to be a man: kunzim’ ukuba yindoda. But men remain whole, no protruding stomach, three months’ healing, and change in the body to provide milk for the baby. Men are the preferred sex because polygamy is allowed in Islam and most of Africa. They still have their fun somewhere else, while the mother is healing.
Thwa-la. We don’t carry heavy bags on our heads anymore because they have wheels and that pull-on thing, making us look like pilots and flight attendants, striding on the airport floor with their crew bags.
Women in rural Africa, South America and Asia still carry firewood and water containers on their heads. Women in the European Union, Canada and the U.S. don’t carry kids in their arms.
They push them in strollers, conditioning them at an early age that mummy and daddy will buy them cars when they turn eighteen. Women in Africa still carry kids on their backs. Certain animals carry their kids while they teach them the A-B-C’s of life (the eat or be eaten situation).
This lesson becomes even more interesting when we come to the noun, the thing that is being carried. It could be luggage or destiny. It’s called um-thwa-lo.
Your destiny is your um-thwa-lo. It is what life allotted you and you cannot change it no matter how hard you try. People around you sigh and say ‘um-thwalo wakhe.’
Women stay in marriages where they are beaten black and blue on the regular. Women give birth to sons who decide to be murderers and thieves. They visit them in prison and sigh: It’s my destiny.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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