Examine the ears of a dog carefully to realize how a mbasio looks like.
mbasio = a “V” shaped piece of wood used to split wood; a wedge.
mbgwa = a dog.
liseengi = the name of a tree.
Yasi nanu: Nimonge complained to his friend Moluwa that he had spent the whole day in the bush trying to split planks from a liseengi log but to no avail.
Moluwa then asked:
“o-gbwe-ya-neya ‘mbasio’ ?
(Did you use a ‘mbasio’ ?{a wedge}
Nimongo replied:
“What is a ‘mbasio’ ?
I have never seen a ‘mbasio’.
How does a ‘mbasio’ look like ?
(nasa-vi ‘mbasio’;
ne ‘mbasio’ ae-neya ?)
Moluwa responded:
“osa-vi te ‘mbasio’ wa i-nja-neya mato ma Mbgwa”.
(“Examine the ears of a dog carefully to realize how a mbasiyo looks like”).
The shape of a ‘mbasio’ resembles the shape of the ears of a dog. ‘Mbasio’ is a ‘V’ shaped piece of wood used to split wood. Moluwa sharpened a short piece of wood to a ‘V’ shape, and then said:
‘This is a ‘mbasiyo’ = (‘mbasiyo ene’).
Moluwa inserted the sharp end of the ‘mbasio’ into a grove on a log. He hammered the wide end of the ‘mbasio’, and succeeded to split the log into two pieces.
“osavi te ‘mbasio’, wa i-nja-ne-ya mato ma mbgwa”.
Literally:
The behaviour of that child is not or will not be different from the behaviour of his/her father/mother. He/she is a chip off the old block.
This/that is the pattern; examine it carefully.
Oma Nanu
Imba Thomas Mbua Ndoko
Chicago ILL, USA.
Comments