I first encountered Ligusha during Peace Corps training. I had been sent out to live with the Maseko family, who gave me my Swazi name, Sipho Maseko, which means “A gift to the Maseko family”. That part of training was called “homestead visit”. The Corps had basically kicked we innocent trainees out of the warm, secure training camp, and arranged for us to each live with a Swazi family for a week or so. With basically no SiSwati with which to communicate. I had been hitting it pretty hard at the training camp, doing my best to assimilate a language that made almost no sense, but in the 3 weeks I had been in Swaziland, all I could say in it, was basic greetings, and how to describe your family. The language teachers seemed to put a lot of stock into me knowing how to talk about family. And all I could do with that, was just use some phrases that I had memorized and could sometimes recognize them as they were spoken.

They loaded me and another trainee into a pickup truck, and drove us out into the bush, along goat tracks as a road, with our backpack of clothes and stuff, and a big box of foodstuffs, so that our staying with the family would not be a hardship on their larder. They let my buddy Mike out at his family, and people rushed up to him, all talking, in SiSwati of course, all at once. I was so nervous about my inability to really communicate in the language. We drove off into the bush, with me feeling really alone, and 10 minutes later  we came out into the open, and there was a homestead with about 10 mud huts with thatched grass roofs. There were 3 women, and a horde of kids. They rushed over to me, as I climbed down out of the pickup with my pack, talking and laughing, and having a great ol’ time, smiling, and shaking my hand. Everybody was talking at once, and I couldn’t make heads nor tails about what was aimed at me, and what was them talking to each other. When you find yourself in a situation like that, smile, brother, smile. And I did. The driver hefted the enormous box of food out of the truck, and staggered over to the nearest hut, and set it down, and got back in the truck, gave me a salute, and drove away.

Ulp.

One woman managed to get everybody calmed down, and then she very calmly went through the traditional greetings. I had mastered those. After all, wherever you are in the world, and no matter what language the people speak, what is the first thing they say?

Hello.

Hello.

How are you?

I am fine. How are you?

I am fine. What is your name?

My name is Sam. What is your name?

My name is Mother Maseko.

I whipped through that like I was a native speaker, even managing to get the clicky sounds in SiSwati more or less correctly. Then it went right into the family stuff. Just like they had taught us at camp.

Is your family well?

My father is well. My mother is not present. (it was impolite to say my mom was dead. Instead I had to just say she was not present)

Oh, sorry brother. What is your position in your family?

I am the middle child. I have two sisters, one older, and one younger.

Well, that used up my knowledge of SiSwati. Then it was just words, that a lot of them I didn’t recognize. After a while the 3 mothers, who I managed to understand were the wives of Father Maseko, talked among themselves for a minute. I imagined they were saying this…

Well, our brother here seems to not be very intelligent.

Yes, and he is tall.

What in the world should we do with him?

I don’t know

We should give him a name, so he can be part of the family.

What will we call him?

How about dummy?

No. Maybe, He who is not very bright.

No. He is a gift. We shall call him Gift to the Maseko clan.

But not a very smart gift.

And they turned to me, and with many repetitions of words, I finally understood that my new name was Sipho Maseko. Then they went back to chatting with each other.

Now what?

Hell, I don’t know.

What do you want to do?

Let us fob him off on a small child. TV does not seem to be afraid of him, let us have her take him to the house where he will be sleeping.

Oh, good idea! Then we can look in that ginormous box that the driver put there.

And a small girl came over and took my hand, and pulled me along to a hut on the perimeter, and we went in, and she gestured to me to put my pack down. There was a bed and a table in the hut. I put my pack on the bed, and sat on the floor cross legged. She came over and sat by me. She looked to be maybe 7 years old. She chatted me up in english.

TV: My name TV.

Me: My name Sipho. (remembering that I now had a family name) How are you, TV?

TV: I am very fine, teacher.

Me: Well, what do you want to do now?

She looked startled, and said, “I am very fine teacher.” Ah, like me, she had reached the limit of her language.

I smiled and said quickly, “The sly brown fox jumped over the sleeping dog.”

She grinned, and said back to me, very rapidly, “Blah blah balbbity blib blab whippity blah.” Something in SiSwati, but I had no idea what. She started laughing, and I did too. I shrugged my shoulders. She shrugged hers back at me. Then she got up, and went to my pack, and started taking things out of it, and looking at them. She had my t-shirt. I thought I remembered that the word “what?” was something like “Yini?”

Me: Yini?

TV: Sikhipa. (and she wiggled the t-shirt)

Me: Sikhipa. Tee Shiiirrrt.

TV: Teeee shiiirrt.

And she proceeded to take everything out of my pack, one thing at a time, and say the SiSwati word, and I would repeat it, and say the English word, and she would repeat it, and go on to the next thing. Shirt, pants, socks, book, whatever came out. We were having a great time. She pulled out my jockey shorts, and giggled, and covered her eyes, and set them aside. I had to laugh out loud. Finally she got to the pockets on the outside of my pack. Tissue. Band aids. Pen. Paper. Hat. She put the hat on. it came down over her ears, almost covering her eyes. She tipped it back, and reached into the pocket again. Sunglasses. She put my sunglasses on, opened her eyes, and snatched them right back off quickly. They are prescription glasses to correct my poor vision. It probably startled her how out of focus things had appeared. TV went to the last pocket, and took out my harmonica, and looked at it for about 30 seconds, turning it around, and looking at the holes where you blow in, and she put it up to her eyes and tried to see through the holes. Then she took it down, and looked at me with her eyebrows raised, and said “Yini?”

Me: Harmonica

TV: Hurmoaniki

Me: Haaarrmonicaaa

TV: Hermooneekuh

I took it and played Mary had a little lamb. She took it from me, and blew into it up and down the notes, hooting around on it, giggling.

Suddenly, the door burst open on the hut, and a bunch of kids came crowding in, gabbing and laughing, sitting everywhere. Then we had to go thru everything in my pack all over again, with me saying the English, and TV saying the SiSwati, and all the kids trying to say the English. It was a party, and we were having great fun. Then one of the mothers came in, and shooed the kids out, and set down a plate of food.

I could see that she had pulled some things out of the big food box, and made me a supper. I thanked her, and she went out. TV remained with me. I looked at the plate of food. There was an egg fried over easy, with a red candied apple slice sitting on top surrounding the yolk. And a pop tart. There was a small blob of porridge, the staple food of Swaziland, and a small pile of mushy green stuff, sort of spinach-ish looking. TV and I went thru the word exchange game with the food. When we came to the green stuff, it was called Ligusha. That is pronounced Lee-goooosh-uh. So I tasted it, and it tasted just like you would think something with the sound GOOOSH in its name would taste. Gooshy, and bitter, like arugula with an overtone of freshly mown grass. Not great, not bad. We shared the meal, TV and I.

By the 4th day, I was done with sitting around all day, and when I saw the boys heading out that morning, with rakes and hoes, I jumped up and went with them. We walked for a while, and came to the community garden. The boys each picked a tool, and got to work hoeing and raking the weeds from some long rows of cabbage plants. I went over to the tool pile, and selected a hoe. It was a cast iron hoe head, on a long crooked tree branch, and weighed a ton. I picked a row, just like the boys had done, and got busy hoeing. Some of the boys tried to stop me, but I just kept working, and saying it was ok, that I knew how to hoe. They weren’t happy, but there wasn’t much they could do. I hoed till mid day, and when I saw them stopping to go sit in the shade, I too stopped. I had a couple of good blisters on my hands. For the last 6 months before I came to Africa, I had gone to massage school, and did outcall massages up until right before I flew to Swaziland. My hands were soft, and not used to hoeing. We drank some water, and ate some porridge they had brought, and got back to work. Again, the boys tried to stop me from working, but to no avail. It was hot in the sun, and I was glad that I had my hat on. Finally, the sun was near the horizon, and we quit, and gathered the tools, and walked back to the homestead. Two of my blisters had popped, and were bleeding, but I lived on a farm, as a kid, and knew that they would heal.

When we got back near the homestead, TV came running out, and took my hand while we were walking. She looked down and saw the blood, really, it wasn’t much, and she looked up at me with such sorrow, and she had a fit. She stopped, and put her hands on her hips, and lit into the boys. She went on a tirade at them. Shouting, and gesturing at my hands, and really dressing them down. The boys were looking at their feet, and acting kind of afraid of her, and with good reason. Sparks were coming from this tiny little girl’s eyes. Then she ran off into the homestead. I walked over to my house, and got out my bandaids, and Neosporin, and was washing my hands so I could fix them up, and Mother Maseko came in. She walked over to me, and took my hands and turned them up, and looked at them. She turned to the door, and snapped out something, and the two oldest boys came slinking into my hut. She started dressing them down like TV, but more assertively. It wasn’t the boys fault, and I jumped up and shouted STOP! STOP! They all sat there stunned. Lacking words, I played charades, and pantomimed hoeing, then I went over to the oldest boy, and put his hands on my shoulders, and held them there while I acted like I was pulling away. Then I pushed him away, and went back to hoeing. Then I grabbed the other boys hands, and held them on my shoulders, and pushed him so it looked like he was trying to pull me, and I kept shaking my head no, and pushing on him. It looked so comical. He was completely inert. It looked so funny that I started laughing. Then Mother Maseko kind of smiled, and then she chuckled. The boy was standing there limply, and I was clamping his hands on me, and making a big deal like I was trying to get back to hoeing. She got the point. I put my arms around the two boys, and said Bamngani bami, my friends. Mother calmed down, and everything was forgiven. TV came and sat in my lap while I bandaged my hands, and in a while another mother showed up with a plate of food, and TV and I ate. Tonight it was 2 chocolate chip cookies, with a piece of spam between them. I don’t think the mothers had seen much of the food in the box before. And the ubiquitous blob of porridge, and another lump of Ligusha.

When I eventually got out to my school, and started teaching, several times I heard my fellow teachers talking about who made the best ligusha. Everybody had their own recipe, like Texas Chili fests, but it always tasted the same to me, bitter green mush with a grassy taste.

After I had moved out  onto the homestead from the teachers quarters at school, about a year and a half later, I was sitting in my house one saturday, grading papers, and my grandmother walked by. I greeted her and asked her where she was going.

“I am going to pick some ligusha, Maseko.”

“Oh, good, Grandmother! May I accompany you?”

“Yes, of course”

So, I went with her. I had always wondered what plant ligusha was made from. I thought maybe Lambs Quarter, or Wild Spinach, or maybe dandelion greens. We walked for a while, and she came to a gate that was open into a field, and in the triangle behind the gate, she started picking some plants. I asked her which plants, and she said, “All of them here, Maseko.” Um, it was weeds. And not even the same kind of weeds. There was a hodgepodge of different weeds behind the gate, and she was picking them indiscriminately. So I helped her, and we carried a big bunch of weeds back home for tonight’s ligusha. No wonder it has GOOOSH in the name.

I miss you TV.

Greens Matter