Coffee With Mangwa Anani
If you are having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my tangle of words. Let’s pretend that whatever time you read this post is first thing in the morning, so that I can bid you good morning in Shona… Mangwanani.
On the surface, it could seem like just a casual greeting, wishing someone a good morning, but it could be also so much more… I ran into a TikTok video that gave a mind-blowing insight into the depth behind the phrase.
Mangwanani is a combination of the words Mangwa and Anani. Mangwa is said to be another word for mashoko meaning Words and Anani means who has… Thus, Mangwa anani is a question asking Mashoko anani or Who has the words… think of it like the colloquial street phrase… Whats the word?
In the Shona culture, dreams are never just dreams, and there is meaning and nuance in what we dream, for when we sleep, that’s when we commune with ancestors, allowing them a medium they can interface with us…. After all, sleep is the cousin of death,just without the permanence…
The greeting mangwa anani, mangwanani; is a quest to find if anyone has received words and guidance from the great beyond.. Who has the words?…. Silence is also communication; if no one has received any messages in dreamland, then it’s a sign that all is well or at least going as it should.
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that it’s all very fascinating except that I haven’t had any direct confirmation that Mangwa is actually another word for mashoko that’s words… In the present ChiShona language, Mangwa is not even a valid word by itself except as part of the words Mangwanani, which means good morning and Mangwana which means tomorrow or the next day and sometimes a yet to come future.
If you were having coffee with me, I would ask if you ever dream of things before they come to pass or have dreams that have meaning beyond the brain’s flights of fancy.
Dreams are weird, they say that on average we dream 3–6 times every night, mostly during REM sleep. Most people remember very few or none or of their dreams, not because they didn’t dream, but because of how the brain handles memory during and after REM sleep, dreams are not actively transferred to long-term storage.
Ever noticed how you can remember something vividly and then later when you try to tell someone else it’s a blur that gets harder to make sense of the harder you try to recall?
If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that sometimes I have dreams that feel like they are telling me something but most times they are just fantastical snippets of my experiences. Although I must admit to being curious as to how we dream of people we have never met or seen, where does the detail come from?
Sometimes I write down my thoughts if I happen to wake up from a dream, but so far the things I have managed to capture tend to not have any profound meaning to the awake version of me as if there’s context and subtext I am not cognisant of…
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that if you don’t have a dream, how will you know when it comes true?…
I have dream about a world where we are more considerate to each other, where success has nothing to do with our parents credentials in the liberation struggle or which politician I vote to have their turn at handling the state coffers, my money safe and waiting for me when I bank it, turning the tap and clean water comes out and flipping on a switch and the lights come on….
You, could be out there living my dream life, and I, am the dreamer, wondering when I will stop sleepwalking through life. Recently, our power utility company celebrated 41 days of uninterrupted power output, and I am here thinking about who must be having grand electrical dreams because in the last 41 days, my supply has been very much interrupted.
What’s been going on in your neck of the woods, dreamt of anything interesting lately?
~B
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