VULNERABLE MISSION

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 134–153
engaging in chores at home in Portuguese. Huambo, like Angola in general, functions
in Portuguese. 34
European languages remain rooted in foreign cultures; they do not
become Africanized.
Harries admits that some of his linguistic argument would not apply “if European languages
were allowed to become African”:
142
Should communication with European originators of the foreign languages used in Africa
suddenly cease, then the very languages will become Africanised. This is not currently happening,
because (at least in East Africa) Northern languages are valued exactly because of the
links that they enable with the North, and are assessed using foreign standards. 35
Angolan Portuguese stands as a counter-example to Harries’s assumptions. Since a majority
of people in Angolan cities function primarily in Portuguese (in all contexts of life,
even home life), and since a sizeable minority speak no other language besides Portuguese,
it is clear that they have found a way to Africanize the Portuguese language—to
root it in the Angolan context and adapt it to fit Angolan life. A hypothetical glimpse at
the vocabulary of an Angolan morning may illustrate the case:
Paizinho wakes up before the sunrise and immediately goes outside for his matatino (morning
run), a typical Mwangolé (Angolan) morning routine. Back at home he draws water
from the cacimba (well) to take a bath, conserving the water bué (very) carefully since it is
August, near the end of cacimbo (the dry season). Clean and refreshed, he takes a few moments
to matabichar (eat breakfast) before heading out for the day. Normally Paizinho works
doing candongueiro (informal business that involves buying, transporting, and selling), but
today he must visit the soba (local authority figure) to discuss some makas (problems) regarding
his family in the kimbo (rural area). Before going to the jango (meeting hut), he winds his
way through the beko (alleyway) to the market to buy a gift to present to the soba. He knows
which sellers will give him eskebra (a little extra for free); perhaps today someone might even
give him kilapi (informal credit), since he is short on cash.
34 I am painting only one side of the picture. Umbundu is also widely used in the bairros of Huambo, especially
among women. It is fairly easy to find a few women in the market who do not speak Portuguese, typically
those who travel in from rural areas to sell their goods. In rural areas, Umbundu predominates, but Portuguese
is also very widely spoken. In contrast, the city center of Huambo uses Portuguese almost exclusively. Someone
who speaks only Umbundu would not be able to accomplish basic tasks in the city center. I am not trying
to say that Bantu languages have been ousted from Angola, but rather that Portuguese has been grafted in and
has become an inextricable part of Angolan life.
In Luanda, the national capital, where a third of Angola’s population resides, the situation is even starker:
“In Luanda Portuguese is used almost universally, at home and in the street, although people have sometimes
introduced words from the local languages as well as recently created terms.” Robson and Roque, 82.
35 Harries, Vulnerable Mission, 156; emphasis added. See also his similar reasoning on p. 250, where he thinks
about the possibility of “a big wall . . . to keep Westerners out.” In effect, the civil war was that big wall. For
27 years the Western world abandoned Angola—except for supplying it with armaments—and precious few
foreigners dared to live in Angola during that time (with the notable exception of the South African and Cuban
military forces during the early years of the war). Doubtless this isolation provided major impetus for the
Africanization of Portuguese. However, from what I can deduce in conversation with Angolans, the process
of Africanization was well under way before the civil war. From the picture that Birmingham, 8, relates, it
seems that the Africanization of Portuguese truly began among the Angolan mestiço urban elite that dominated
Luanda during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.