The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
GROWING up at Sankonjana in the southern part of Matobo District in the late 50s and early 60s we used to hear the song, or was it a chant, by our sisters: “Ngibon’ inyoni yami, elamaqanda ‘two’, elesithathu ngunina!” Literally, the naughty sisters were expressing something we all knew about. Literally their song was, “I have seen my bird with ‘two’ eggs. The third one is the mother.” In those days when we were growing up, our parents did not buy us underwear. Our sexual organs were well aerated and ventilated. Depending on how one sat down, the mischievous sisters, peering in the right direction, gleaned our dangling sex organs, then more of hose pipes than anything else.
Fifty years on, I take a keen interest in the full import of what was being expressed. Why did our sisters refer to our sex organs as birds, a single bird with two eggs? Indeed, they saw three parts — a penis here referred to as a bird. The bird has two eggs.
When and why has a penis been likened to a bird? Further, where were these sisters, younger than me of course, deriving the symbolism and imagery resident and embedded in our sexual organs? Without doubt, they were not the creators of the idea.
They simply inherited it from their elder sisters. Today, as I take a keen interest at the iconic Zimbabwe Bird, I am intrigued and many questions race through my mind. So, after all, reference to sex organs as birds is not new? My inquisitive mind is set ablaze. Have I not said an idea is, in the African context, expressed in more media than one?
Further enquiry seems to point to the penis as the bird and the centre of attraction. The two eggs, in reality the two testes, are referred to as eggs by my sisters, both laid by the bird. One can surmise that it is the penis whose image and representation is embedded in the bird symbol. The Zimbabwe Bird surely is no less than two thousand years old. So, an oral tradition, in the form of a song, can endure that long through intergenerational cultural transmission? The people who sang the song were our sisters who were Nyathi, just like us their siblings. What does this tell us about their history? Were their ancestors at one time in history resident at Great Zimbabwe? Could it be that the idea of a penis being a bird goes beyond Great Zimbabwe, in spatial and temporal terms, making it Pan-African?
For now, suffice it that a penis can and was perceived as a bird. What link is there between the narrative that we are pursuing and the bird representation? Does this in any way help us to perceive the Zimbabwe Bird in a new light which is congruent with what we have said so far? What is worth noting though, is that as boys, even when our equally naughty eyes ventured very far and saw exposed female genitals, we never had a song or chant to embrace what our naughty eyes saw. This is in line with selective morality when it comes to women.
What we do learn from the centuries old traditional chant is that it sheds some light on the Zimbabwe Bird. First, let us give some hint that we referred to in an earlier instalment. Here we are referring to swearing among Africans which touches on sexual organs. “Your father’s neck/ Ntamo kayihlo!” This terminology, as we said, is never used with reference to women for they do not have “necks.” Instead, they have “mouths” which men do not have. This is how Africa copes with issues too explicit, too vulgar and too obscene and too offensive. Even at the level of language, there is lingual engineering in terms of imagery, metaphor and symbolism to morally traverse a socially immoral culture scape. This is what Africans share in common, in terms of use of language and application of African Cosmology and African Worldview.
Clearly, we have ventured beyond the bird wings that we introduced last week. In a forthcoming instalment the “neck” of the Zimbabwe Bird will become apparent. That will be the second anatomical component of the Zimbabwe Bird; cylindrical in shape and sung by our sisters at Sankonjana without much by way of seeking interpretation of symbolism, imagery and metaphor embedded or resident in the centuries old chant. Songs and sculpture, it would seem, do express the same ideas in their own different but similar ways — African ways.
For now though, let us take our narrative to the first anatomical structural component of the Zimbabwe Bird. It was made abundantly clear that the two labia, in female anatomy, are represented by the two wings which constitute the Zimbabwe Bird.
The similarity that was capitalised upon was numbers, two in both cases, and shape. Both are thin in terms of thickness. What is important though is to identify where the idea is expressed elsewhere and also see whether sexuality is expressed. In the neck imagery, sexuality was underpinned and therefore expressive of the idea of continuity, endlessness, eternity, perpetuity and immortality.
Quite clearly, the idea of sexuality is evident. Labia are part of female sexual organs or genitalia. What now remains is to investigate African ideas regarding labia. The one aspect relates to the practice of extending labia, a feat that is accomplished in many different ways in different African communities. What may vary from one African community to the next is how the feat is achieved. I still remember vividly when I interviewed some ladies regarding the topic in Masvingo in the 1990s.
Extension of labia was well known to them. They cited one plant that is used in their culture, a plant that is sniffed and results in violent sneezing during which labia get extended. They also cited a water lily which is used to physically pull labia and, in the process, get gradually extended.
Apparently, the water lily is referred to as a river’s labia, “amaleb’ omfula” and is captured in one of the clan praises of the Ndiweni women. Two leaves of a water lily are used, one on each side of a single labium, to pull it. Repeated pulling over a long period of time results in labia or “bird wings” getting extended. Now the question is pulling the labia for what purpose? It is believed pulled labia sexually stimulate a man; they provide the much needed sexual arousal. One humorous male artist once referred to the extended labia as a “man’s guitar strings,” that he strums during foreplay. Apparently, various African communities share this aspect in common.
Some years back I interviewed a man who was knowledgeable in Karanga traditional culture. Referring to a woman’s sexual organ with unextended or unpulled labia as a chikari/ isikali he went to say this was despised. This was a rather vivid description deriving from a beer mug whose rim is of the same height right round. Where labia have been pulled, there are overlaps deriving from the pulled labia that extend beyond the rest of the vaginal mouth. The artists or more specifically, stone sculptors at Great Zimbabwe knew about these African ideas and practices relating to sex. However, they would not have drawn the labia in isolation as moral considerations were not going to allow it. But when the labia are fashioned out as part anatomical structures of a bird, immoral cultural terrain has been successfully traversed. What viewers see is a bird; innocent, faultless and flawless.
It is only the eyes of an African mind that sees and perceives beyond the material and physical aspects to glean the intangibles in the African cultural world fraught with symbolism, metaphors and imagery.
