Jabulile, the side-chick who meandered into a main chick!

Umqombothi: A traditional South African craft beer made from maize, sorghum, or millet. Once fermented, it turns slightly sour and thick. This unique lager, with its esteemed cultural and ceremonial significance, was widely popularised globally in the Yvonne Chaka Chaka same name hit in 1988, becoming a symbol of South African tradition and celebration.

Lobola: Beyond a transactional exchange of livestock in a Zulu marriage ceremony, Lobola negotiations symbolises the meshing of two families.

Ihlanzi: Fish

Dearest Irreverent Readers!

Another scandal is upon us! Hold onto your beads! ‘Jabulile’ and her messy history were fed to us by herself via a trusted bean spiller. Believe it or not! After seventy years of silence, Jabulile, now ugogo  Jabulile, needed the record on her ‘situationship aka entanglement’ with Sanele straightened. Entrusting Unathi, one of our loyal bean spillers from the Zulu Kingdom’s hills, to share with us every misplaced and misconstrued antic, her hope is that the truth of whether or not she was indeed Sanele’s side-chick would be finally unveiled and quashed, once and for all! “Ugogo Jabulile…Why now?” Unathi bowed his head to Jabulile and queried, at eighty-eight, she was an elder now… Ugogo. “Before I transition and rejoin my ancestors, and hopefully meet Thandeka again, my best friend, I’d like the world to know that she was the main chick and there were no side chicks. I’d like to leave this earth with a clean slate. I have heard that the bean spillers carry information far and wide. May my voice be heard across the terrain- I, Jabulile, was never Sanele’s or anyone’s side chick… Sanele loved my best friend Thandeka, and her only. It was all the confusion of the white man and the quagmire his ways created.”

Many, many moons ago, Thandeka and Sanele, descendants of two chiefs, were the adored couple, the match of the season in Ugogo Jabulile’s village! Before chaos erupted, their romance was on everyone’s lips. Their wedding was set under the full moon in uMgungundlovu, the mightiest Zulu city-the powerful elephant! But that all crashed and burnt. Not because the bride was running late, but believe it or not, no thanks to the weaseling of Mr. Henry, the ‘Timekeeper,’ and his European calendar! A calendar that reshuffled the months’ seasons worse than the order that the village drunk played his drums…the white people; family and friends, have always had strange ways. Mr. Henry, aka ‘The Timekeeper’, clearly failed to understand that the village didn’t run on his clock; his clock was the crest of the mess.

You’re reading right; Thandeka, Ugogo Jabulile’s best friend, was the original bride-to-be. Her stunning wedding beads and glowing face made the ancestors dance. Sanele, the groom, with a smile that humbled a rhino’s stubbornness, was all set for their moonlit nuptials. Umqombothi overflowed, the guests were loud and jovial, celebratory screams erupted, goats bleated, cows mooed, and the drums pierced the clouds… only for the snobbish Mr. Henry to lumber in and declare that, according to the Gregorian calendar, it was still March… Whatever March was! And, the wedding? Cancelled, or instead postponed until July. More than one problem ensued… Addressing the entire village, Mr. Henry’s translator, Dumisani, said ‘Jabulile!’ instead of July. “This wedding has been postponed because of Jabulile!”-were the translator’s exact words. Jabulile’s heart dropped at her best friend’s side. Siya, Jabulile’s nemesis, who also understood English, sprinkled salt on the Inhlanzi. Her translations were fishy, “Mr. Henry has postponed the wedding three months away for Sanele to marry Jabulile!” Jabulile’s eyes bulged, “What the…?”

Sanele and Thandeka’s families wailed and grunted, and the umqombothi soured. Mr. Henry pointed at his leather-bound calendar, “I’m terribly sorry,” he stated. Although his sympathy didn’t match his sneer, the translator got that translation right. He peered through his round spectacles that perched on his nose. It couldn’t get worse? You’d think… From the translator repeatedly mentioning the word ‘Jabulile,’ Mr. Henry assumed it was the translation for ‘July’ and poured acid into the wound, “It’s only March, my dear. Jabulile is the right time. Jabulile is when we marry, and the summer is blooming in England. Jabulile is a beautiful month.” Like she was stuck in a hollow, bottomless joke, Mr.Henry’s magnified eyes fixated on Jabulile the human when he mentioned ‘Jabulile’ as a month. She tunneled right before him.

“Jabulile! Jabulile! Kungani??” Thandeka’s eyes slit, and her face poured with sweat, clenching her jaws like a wild beast. “Why?? How can you do this to your best friend, Jabulile!” Siya reinforced in English, and Mr. Henry, oblivious, fanned himself with the calendar, “There’s no need to get so upset…” Two steps taken forward, Mr. Henry placed his hand on Jabulile’s right shoulder. She froze. Her feet felt like they dried in pits of dung. Taken as a sign of Mr. Henry’s acknowledgment of Jabulile as the bride, Thandeka’s mother screamed, “Ai! Ai! Ai! Ai! Ai!” Wandile, Sanele’s brother, scratched the back of his head, “Yoh! Women are devils. Neh? Your own best friend is your man’s side-chick?? And goes to the white coloniser to help them mislead the village?! Angazi!” Call it fear, devastation, confusion, or a trailmix of all, Jabulile’s jaw failed to unlock. She stayed mum. Sanele pleaded with Thandeka, “Uthando lwami!” He clenched Thandeka’s wrist, and she yanked it away. “It’s not what you think, my love!” he begged. Umkhulu Dingane, the chief of Sanele’s clan, bunched his wrinkled face when he exclaimed, “Just marry them both! Ai! You can even add these two as a bonus for free, no lobola required, these two granddaughters of mine who don’t know how to ferment umqombothi! Even a cobra would spit if it drunk their umqombothi,” he pointed to two slender girls with identical cocoa skin. In the corner, they jeered silently under their breath.  Umkhulu Dingane continued his rant, “These young people and their foolish ways of loving one woman. Marry both Thandeka and Jabulile in three months!” he spat. “Does this season of marriage in three months have a name?” Umkhulu Dingane scoffed, “Yes,” Siya knelt, “Mr. Henry says it is called July…” Umkhulu’s beads were as old as the trees that lined the village, “This July thing… is a cold season??? Why would white people get married when it is cold? Let me drink my umqombothi. I do not understand these ways…”

With anger reaching it’s boiling peak, Thandeka sprung on Jabulile, and they tumbled to the ground, ripping each other’s waist beads, hides, and skins. “You think I never used to see you salivating over Sanele in the fields like a buffalo on heat!” Thandeka yanked the plaits in Jabulile’s head. Like most female best friends, the complexities of envy suffocated into perpetual grins until one fateful day they exhaled into wide honest breath…the fateful day was that day, “Thandeka, you may be the wealthier one, but don’t let your jealousy for my singing and dancing skills ruin your feast. Sanela’s heart may be yours, but that does not mean his attention and that of all the warriors in the village does not get severed into two when my waist whines and I dance and sing!” The lobola cows and their glorious horns scurried off, clearly upset about the display of uncouthness, waiting for this cold season Mr. Henry called “July” to reclaim them as centre stage again. Sanele screamed, “What torment has befallen me! This ‘July’ thing is an omen!” The villagers were left reeling at the fight in disarray when Thandeka and Jabulile rolled into the umqombothi pots. Sizwe, the village fermenter, wailed, “Do you know how long I’ve been brewing this! This was supposed to be the wedding of the year!” Wedding of the year? He meant the African calendar year… Sadly, the royal wedding turned out to be a Gregorian disaster.

Irreverent readers, Thandeka and her family, deeply rifted, run Jabulile, Sanele’s infamous side-chick, off to a different village following the fight. It is said that three months away in the cold season called ‘July,’ indeed, Sanele and Thandeka married. The first Zulu royal wedding that took place in the winter. Shivering guests and chattering teeth, it was a bizarre wedding, a metaphor for what would come from the Gregorian calendar. This calendar didn’t respect that calendars were borne of seasons, and every land was blessed with seasons of its own. The Gregorian calendar, desperate to colonise, subdued every belief that the moon and sun did not only shine in their lands, the moon and sun smiled at every terrain. The Gregorian calendar, desperate to suffocate, vexed all mysteries of the moon and the stars and was fixated only on mysterious, incoherent timelines. It was not guided by the earth’s movements but by the quill and ink of the Romans, their deities, conquests, and whims. The village oracle suggests that in future Gregorian years, Mother Earth would suffer and crumble to its knees because the people would be illiterate to the whisperings of the Earth and its tales. So, the seasons will be inconsistent. The Zulu will fly to Rome to get married in the Roman summer in July, and despise the summer of the Zulu sun in the harvest months… Mother Earth will shudder from the backs turned on its variant cycles centred around one. It will rain when it’s meant to snow and freeze when the heat is needed. There will be unexplained and undetermined storms and fires, floods, and hurricanes because each one detached from their mother calendar and assumed the calendar of another.

Was Mr. Henry trying to schedule Sanele and Thandeka’s wedding, or was he desirous of controlling our time? Was it about planning a wedding or confining our rhythm? Isn’t our time our identity? Our waves are imbued by our ebbs and flows… Who are we without our own clock? Mr. Henry thought he could just shuffle months around like he was God or something? Well, the people of Zululand were not having it.

Thank the Zulu oracles that averted this madness and reclaimed the African calendar year so that weddings took place in the hot season during the harvest. It was then that Jabulile married her dashing prince, a Swazi hunter. After living in exile from her banishment, she found love, two years on, a love that rekindled its warmth under the moonlight. After sixty-five African years of marriage, one thing’s for sure: the Gregorian system has nothing on Jabulile and her Swazi prince, Mduduzi. It has nothing on these two. With Mduduzi, entwined in the Swazi calendar’s stars of each moon cycle, Jabulile was finally a forever main chick…

We hope Ugogo Jabulile and her story inspire you to find the rhythm that speaks to your soul. We hope you reclaim the seasons that guided how your ancestors hunted, planted and wed. We hope that you’re inspired to ask yourself… What does the Gregorian calendar even mean? What does March or July even mean? Do you know the translations of the Gregorian twelve months (January to December) and their significances?

Until next time, always remember that ‘Spilling The Beans’ is here to bring you laughter during strange times! One scandalous tale at a time, never forget, our bean spillers are always on the prowl…

Yours in Scandal,

The only anonymous bean spiller.