Don't Upset ooMalume: A Guide to Stepping Up Your Xhosa Game, by Hombakazi Mercy Nqandeka

Don't Upset ooMalume: A Guide to Stepping Up Your Xhosa Game, by Hombakazi Mercy Nqandeka. Jonathan Ball Publishers South Africa. Cape Town, South Africa 2022. ISBN 9781776192113 / ISBN 978-1-77-619211-3

Don't Upset ooMalume: A Guide to Stepping Up Your Xhosa Game. Hombakazi Mercy Nqandeka writes with an easy familiarity of the Xhosa cultural background showing how the ordinary language is filled with elocution from ancient wisdom.

Like many black people in South Africa, I was born and raised in a village - Mqele location in Elliotdale in the Eastern Cape. My rural upbringing has made me who I am today. Elliotdale is a small town situated in a valley through which the Xhorha River runs and perhaps that is why the town is called Xhorha by Xhosa people. When I was a child, Elliotdale was a one-street town; you could walk up and down in less than an hour and cover the whole town. It has expanded in recent years with more government offices and complexes of shops and banks, places we didn't have when I grew up. It has a semi-arid climate, which can be dry and dusty in winter and very wet and green in summer. My mother, Lindiwe, tells me I was an en caul birth, meaning I was born inside an intact amniotic sac. In the Xhosa culture, an en caul birth is seen as something special and it is believed that the child will be blessed with good fortune. She named me Mercy because what she needed most in those years were mercy and peace. My father had been mentally ill for years and it brought so much turmoil and difficulty to our family. Apparently, I was a peaceful baby who barely cried. Our relative Tat' Mkwayi attested to that when he visited a few days after I was born. When he got to the hut I was in, he expressed his surprise that I was such a quiet baby, saying 'lihombakazi lomntwana elV - this is a lady baby. That is how I got my second name, Hombakazi, which means a lady, the organised one. Since it is a Xhosa name, it became the first name on my identity card. However, I am more inclined to be called Mercy because it is what my mother calls me, and it has a deeper meaning to me. I am my mother's mercy and peace. My mother had to leave her four children in the village at Mqele to find a job in Elliotdale and left us in the care of MamTolo, our paternal grandmother. We called her Makhulu, grandmother in Xhosa. She was in her seventies when I was born and by the time I was a toddler, she was already blind. All my memories of her are of me walking with her to wherever she needed to go. That included taking her to the pay point to get her pension grant at Majola Store some few kilometres from home. She would buy me sweets and Russians (the sausage). Going to the pay point with Makhulu offered an opportunity for us to bond even if I sometimes felt embarrassed about having to guide her. She would have none of it, though, and would get upset and shout at me when I had these childish moments. Makhulu made me feel like her favourite grandchild. She used to tell me how I will become a medical doctor - a profession she held in high regard - and one day would own a car, something that was very rare among black South Africans in her time. She saw me as someone who would have a lot of riches. [...]

This is an excerpt from Don't Upset ooMalume: A Guide to Stepping Up Your Xhosa Game, by Hombakazi Mercy Nqandeka.

Title: Don't Upset ooMalume
Subtitle: A Guide to Stepping Up Your Xhosa Game
Author: Hombakazi Mercy Nqandeka
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers South Africa
Cape Town, South Africa 2022
ISBN 9781776192113 / ISBN 978-1-77-619211-3
Softcover, 15 x 23 cm, 272 pages, several b / w photos