Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

Trinité bantoue

II Two months ago, my sister Kosambela decided to show her native country to her sons, two good- looking mixed boys with long, frizzy hair and full lips—9 and 6 years old. She’d always had this plan in mind. And no one could have extracted it, not even with a Caterpillar tractor. It was in Bantuland that she was going to make men of these two little Western weaklings. Real men. There was no way she was going to raise them to be like their father what ’s-his-name, who saw no shame in doing housework. He’d even wanted to take care of the children and had applied for paternity leave. He cries when he tells his wife he loves her! He cries when one of his sons pouts and refuses to eat dinner. Worse, he cries when he doesn’t hear from his mother for two weeks. My sister was dismayed by his behavior. She would think of our military father and exclaim with his favorite expression: is that a man? It ’s a black sheep! And if it weren’t for that-thing-there—yes that ’s what my sister called her husband: that-thing-there—she, Kosambela Matatizo herself, would have taken her sons to Africa, to Bantuland a long time ago. But now, as I talk to you, she can do it because she doesn’t have a husband at home anymore. From now on, she’s raising her sons alone.

59