As I Get Older, I Try To Remember When I Became "Mama"

Bhutis in BoKaap. Laduma Ngxokolo and Trevor Stuurman in Maxhosa.

In isiXhosa culture, it is customary to politely greet your elders – those around the age of your parents – as mama or tata. Those around your own age are greeted as sisi or bhuti. A (ahem, cough) few years ago (I can't remember exactly), I started to notice that the ‘sisi’ greetings were slowly starting to be replaced by ‘mama’. And I did not like it at all. Of course I always appreciate the good manners – how I love good manners – but it was this shift in the words that unsettled me.

I feel I need to explain a bit; else you are just going to tell me to get over myself. I have always been a bit smug about not looking my age. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no JLo. But I am definitely tricky to age accurately. And I take inordinate pleasure in this, right or wrong. (Wrong! I know it's wrong!)

And then recently the sisi greetings stopped altogether. As I enter my fifties – looking MAYBE forty (shut it…) – I am no longer to be confused as anyone but a mama. So am I allowed to think that this is the real marker of the loss of youth? Is it really all done, for real now? It certainly feels like it.

Sisis and Bhutis in their Cape Town Style (and Tata Chu)

Now all I need is a small Afrikaans person to call me ‘tannie’. Then I move back to England where an entirely impolite, yet simple ‘oi’ apparently does the job for people of all ages.

TRANSLATION:

Mama = mother

Tata = father

Sisi = sister

Bhuti = brother

Tannie = aunty

Oi = how do you do, you motherfucker 

In Cape Town the three main languages spoken are isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans.