KITUNDU AND NJINGA

Two vital words in Chichewa, the language of southern Malawi, are kitundu and njinga. Without njinga or bicycles, kitundu or “stuff” cannot be easily moved. Because njinga are expensive and few can afford them, people have learned to use their bodies as a means of transporting their kitundu wherever it needs to go. Seeing people carrying huge loads is a common sight on the roads and along the footpaths through the bush.

Men and women carry sheets of tin, logs of firewood, sacks of grain, boxes and parcels of all sizes. I once saw a man with enough straw on his head to thatch the roof of his hut. Portable sewing machines on the heads of men is a familiar sight in both villages and towns as itinerant tailors bear their machines through the neighborhoods, accompanied by small boys with folded squares of brightly colored of fabric stacked on their heads. When they hear the cry “Hey, Tailor, over here!” they go to the person who wants work done.

Often the client selects the fabric he wants on the spot, and the tailor cuts, sews, and finishes the garment that same day. For more intricate designs and higher quality fabrics, such as the beautiful and intricate wax patterns and refined batiks, the client would normally visit a shop in town.

While the men seem to be the bearers of the largest loads, the women and girls must also carry kitundu. A baby is not kitundu, but the female bearers of kitundu have to transport their smallest child along with everything else. The concept of babysitters, daycare, preschool and all the other institutions that ease the burdens of motherhood in industrial societies are mostly not available to African women. So from a baby’s earliest days, as soon as it is strong enough to hold up its head, until the age of two, sometimes three, they are carried about on their mothers’ backs. Meanwhile, the women go on with their lives quite naturally, pulling water, pounding meal, cooking, washing, shopping, working in the fields, and carrying things. One sees women with buckets of water on their heads, huge bundles of clothes, baskets of bread, pans of fish or fruit, and large bags of maize flour. The baby behind is usually asleep, and if he isn’t, he makes no fuss.

The African women and girls I saw every day were remarkably sure-footed and poised, almost casual in their movements. I have seen women jump across a ditch with a bucket of water on her head and a baby on her back, never sloshing a drop or jolting the child. They are as skilled as circus performers. I marveled at their grace and sense of balance and their strength. I was watching a woman of about my size, pulling water from a well nearby. Her biceps bulged with the effort. She rested a moment, preparing to lift the bucket onto her head. I asked her if she thought I would be able to carry it on my head. “No, Ma’am,” she said, “It would snap your neck.” She smiled as she coiled the piece of twisted fabric she would set on her head as a cradle to keep the pail from slipping. “African women are strong,” she said, starting down the path with long, confident strides. “We have to be. And we start young.”

And indeed they do. Small girls begin carrying their brothers and sisters on their backs when they are not much bigger than the child. One day, I saw my houseboy Weston’s little girl, Helen, walking up the driveway with a teddy bear tied on her back and a shoebox balanced on her head. She was four at the time and already in training to bear her burdens gracefully.

As babies get bigger and heavier, they begin to try to direct their mother’s activities. I saw one trying to reach around and unbutton his mother’s blouse and another carrying her mother’s purse and fiddling with the clasp. Sometimes they buck a little, as if to say, “Come on, giddy-up.” The young ones make only gentle suggestions; these children are never impatient or pushy.

The most remarkable thing to me was the way in which a woman can place a child on her own back without assistance. She does it with one hand, by grasping the baby by its upper arm, bending slightly, then slinging it up onto her back. Then she folds a long piece of cotton cloth to make a tchinge, slings it up too, grabs both ends and ties them in one deft motion. When the baby is properly loaded, she goes forward on her ceaseless round of tasks.

The mothers never carried diaper bags, baby bottles, tissues, baby wipes, pacifiers, toys, or any of the other paraphernalia so necessary for western children. African babies are either at the breast or on the back. When I think of the hundreds of dollars we spend on strollers, baby carriages, and all the rest of it, I wonder which children are the happiest. As part of the Bigification of Everything in America, a child’s stroller now takes up most of the sidewalk, and yet the pampered little riders are often fretful and demanding. In contrast, Malawian babies seldom cry unless they are sick or in pain. They are by nature sweet, patient, and contented. Maybe they don’t demand attention because they get so much “body time” with their mothers, who are always busy but never hurried and never far away. For at least two years the child lives as an extension of its mother’s body, is lovingly cared for, and also nurtured by other women in the family and the community as their own. A stroller as big as an SUV seems little compensation for that.

Obviously, the babies liked riding on their mother’s back. I sometimes wondered what it would be like to have a child on my back as I went through the day’s work. One day, Maki the garden boy, as these workers were called, brought his tiny wife Elizabeth, only a few weeks out of childbed, to show me their newborn. The baby was named Harrison, or so I thought. I later discovered that his name was Allison. Many Malawians, like the Chinese, have trouble with the letter L, which sometimes comes out as an R. Allison had been sleeping soundly when they arrived; but when he started stirring, I asked to hold him. Elizabeth handed him over, and he continued his nap, undisturbed. As the visit was winding down, she took the tchinge he was wrapped in and began to fold it to make the baby’s sling so she could put him on her back. On an impulse, I asked if she would put him on my back for a few minutes before they left. She seemed startled, but she and Maki motioned for me to bend over. They placed the infant a little below my shoulder blades, and Elizabeth wrapped the sling around him and brought the corners around to the front and tied them tightly around my ribcage. The baby struggled while we were fussing with the tchinge, but once he was firmly fastened on, he snuggled down and went back to sleep. Baby Onboard.

He fit comfortably on my back, a satisfying little load. Maki and Elizabeth and I walked around the garden; and when they saw that I wasn’t ready to give the baby up, we strolled up the road in front of my house. Passersby looked at us curiously, as if the sight of a Mazungu with a black child on her back was extraordinary. I guess it was. When they left, Elizabeth whispered something to Maki in Chichewa, which he translated as, “Amayi said, ‘Thank you for touching our baby.’”

Transporting kitundu and kids is one thing, but strong as they are and accustomed from childhood to carrying heavy loads, there are limits to the amount of kitundu that a Malawian can carry. The Malawians profited in the colonial period when the British introduced the bicycle into the territory. They named the contraption “njinga” in imitation of the sound of the bell. For them the njinga was not a recreational vehicle or a toy but a means of transporting themselves and their kitundu as well.

Men ride with large specially-adapted baskets of goods strapped on behind. These wire or willow baskets, as much as three or four feet wide, are used to carry chickens or rabbits. Although Malawians ride when the load is light enough, they use the bicycle most often as we would use a luggage cart. They push the thing along loaded with pieces of lumber, goat carcasses, sacks of charcoal or loads of firewood. For transporting the latter, they often affix a wooden rack to the back of the bike, which allows them to stack the logs up even higher than their heads. I once saw a man riding a bike with a sofa strapped on the back. Fortunately there were few cars on that road because he took up as much room as a truck.

One day I received a visit from a young American who told me he was riding from cape-to-Cairo for Pedals for Progress, an organization whose mission was to collect used and discarded bicycles for distribution in developing countries. Last year, when my apartment building back in Washington DC decreed that residents must claim and tag their bikes in the bike room by a certain date or they would be given to charity, Pedals for Progress made a haul. I cannot imagine an African moving away and abandoning a bicycle. I remembered that in Africa used clothing markets are called “Dead Men’s Markets” because Africans can’t understand why wearable clothes were being put up for sale unless the owner had died.

Curiously, as valuable as bicycles are in Africa, women in Malawi do not ride them. I saw Weston’s big girl Monica riding his bike around the garden but she never took it onto the street. I suspect it’s the attachment to modesty that Malawians have. Women and girls can’t show their legs or wear pants, which lets out a lot of activities we take for granted. “Pedals for Progress” hasn’t been extended to women yet.