Inside My Zulu Hut

Inside My Zulu Hut

It is a hive
without any bees
to build the walls
with golden bricks of honey.
A cave cluttered
with a millstone,
calabashes of sour milk
claypots of foaming beer
sleeping grass mats

wooden head rests
tanned goat skins
tied with riempies
to wattle rafters
blackened by the smoke
of kneaded cow dung
burning under
the three-legged pot
on the earthen floor
to cook my porridge.

Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali

Mtshali gives a highly visual and personal description of the inside of his Zulu hut. His concern with its interior immediately sets up a contrast with the usual reductive picture of the African home as seen from the outside. Far from being spartan and primitive, this hut is full of possessions, stylish customisations, and transformations that follow naturally from being lived. It speaks of its occupant’s daily duties, sense of aesthetics, influence from traditional culture, and practical solutions. It shows the various ways the human interacts with his surroundings as well as how nature provides for his self-preserving, intellectual, and creative impulses. It surely attests to both the simplicity and the complexity that help to create any person’s feeling of homeliness.

Gwee Li Sui