Strange laws, queer expressions and thirsty rulers

Talk about blowing matters out of proportion! In Malawi, a law will soon be passed to outlaw ‘foul air’ from anyone’s ‘down-below’. In Queen’s English, that is called ‘spoiling the air’ or ‘breaking wind’. I can understand it if you say ‘somebody has spoilt the air’ when they let off offensive smell, but what about ‘somebody breaking wind’? Imagine our Francophone brethren. Most probably, they’ll take it literally – physically clutching the wind and breaking it! Anyway, we understand that those are just expressions. Otherwise, I don’t think that Malawian law would apply here in Rwanda. From time immemorial, breaking wind has been a cultural taboo. Kids were exempted but it was unheard of in older children and, especially, adults. That is why its expression in Kinyarwanda is ‘breathing through the down-below’ – equally queer, because it is taboo to even pronounce it. Accidents used to happen, of course, because of the diet of Rwandans that used to consist mainly of beans. Even then, though, the law would not have applied because the ‘culprit’ would invariably have been innocent. It would have been impossible to catch the true offender.Suppose you were a respected elder of the community and you were seated among elders in a gacaca session, to settle a dispute. As an elder, you always carried your walking stick. Every elder had their walking stick – not necessarily because of advanced age but because a stick was a weapon. As a weapon, it was used in defence against all enemies (hostile humans, animals, reptiles, bushes, et al). The accident of breaking wind was an equally hostile enemy and a stick helped you to literally ‘shift blame’. When you sat, you made sure you had sat on your stick. From your stool, you made sure that the stick pointed strategically to the youngest of the elders. So, if the accident ever befell you, it was to the young elder that resultant offence was shifted!For that, it was not unusual to find all sticks pointing at the youngest elder. In such an unfortunate case, everyone knew the implications to the ‘victim’ and sympathised. The victim knew, also, but he had no alternative, as an elder of honour. He was always prepared to suffer in stoic silence, to ‘die ki-officer’. But as Rwandans of honour, we must shift from the base talk of ‘blowing matters’. Similarly, we cannot cause a stink to our constitution. Our law courts can only engage in weighty issues that aim at bringing back in line any wayward compatriot. That’s also the way it was before the distortions of colonialism. Trivial offences of the above nature were handled through verbal intervention of hints and allusions. That’s why this language of hints and allusions is very rich in the Rwandan culture. If there was a person who was particularly offensive in his conduct or actions that were considered trivial, allusions would be made to words, actions, animals, persons or situations that were popularly known to be negative. T he culprit would get the message. The hints and allusions were made in a social gathering, like a reception after a gacaca session or just igitaramo (social evening).To this day, you can tell a Rwandan who has been in igitaramo by their rich repertoire of jokes, in addition to their rhetorical skills. There is this gentleman, for instance, who calls himself Birorinyanza. That’s not his moniker, of course, but people always throng to join his company without bothering about his true identity. And, because Kinyarwanda is rich in innuendoes, most of you reading this will have understood that by his self-given tag, the gentleman is cross-eyed. The true meaning, actually, can be said to roughly mean ‘one who throws his/her gaze at Inyanza’. Inyanza happens to have been the seat of the monarch in the Kingdom of Rwanda. Lacking as I am in those verbal skills acquired in igitaramo, I can only hazard a guess at what the name means. If you are looking to the monarchy wishing to be there, you are looking in impossible places, as a cross-eyed person appears to.Anyway, there is this time Birora (the short form) and some friends visited Berechmas Bisengimana (BB), a close confidant of the president of Zaïre, Mobutu Sese Seko. BB recounted to them the story of when he and his president were on an official visit to Haute Volta (today’s Burkina Faso). Their host, President Jean Baptiste Ouédraogo, took them on a guided tour of a new factory. But, before Mobutu could even enter the factory, he loudly called to BB (pronounced Bé Bé in French): “BB, kende otala biloko na bango. Nga nakeyi kotala ba Tembo na ngayi!” And with that, Mobutu excused himself to his host, President Ouédraogo, who cut short the tour and took Mobutu back to his hotel.In truth, what Mobutu had said was: “BB, go and see the things of these people. I am going to see my Tembo beers!” Not exactly impossible for a president who one time dispatched his presidential jet to Kinshasa from France, to replenish the emptied stock of his favourite Tembo beers ingina2@yahoo.co.uk