DURBAN - Two South Africans have brought a new lingo to Lisbon.
Sayings such as “woza lapha (come here)”, “luister (listen)” and “tudo bom (all good)” have brought a touch of isiZulu, Afrikaans and Portuguese, respectively, into the way Nqobile Bright Mbambo and Hendrik Pretorius communicate on any ordinary day.
On the day South Africa was celebrating Heritage Day, they planned to knock off early from the coffee house where they work, to enjoy a braai after celebrating the occasion with good coffee at work.
“I miss the beef back home. Hendrik and I don’t eat the local beef much,” said Mbambo, 28, who has worked his way into an international career as a barista from humble beginnings, having been brought up by his single mother in uMlazi.
Pretorius, 26, who hails from Gauteng, knew only a bit of isiZulu and Mbambo knew only a bit of Afrikaans. Now they are learning more of each other’s languages as they use them to pepper up their sentences, which comprise mainly English.
The two chums now plan to write a cook book together.
Mbambo said he had started his working life as a waitron in Westville, Morningside and Windermere, falling in love with coffee and becoming a barista.
His picture posts on Instagram about his work led to him receiving an email from a coffee shop in Istanbul, Turkey, inviting him to work there, learn about coffee as well as some Turkish vocabulary that also sometimes lands up in the Lisbon lingua franca.
On his return to Durban, Mbambo started a pop-up shop, Bright Bean, where he specialised in red mocca and iced coffees. Social media once again led him abroad, to Portugal, last year.
Mbambo said one of the highlights of his life was catching his first flight.
“I never travelled by plane in South Africa. Between Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg, I would catch a bus. I was determined that my first flight would be an international one.”
And it was. From Cape Town to Istanbul.
Mbambo has a vision of starting a restaurant, where there is a single table that all customers sit around to chat in a family-like setting, and creating a chain of outlets in South Africa and Australia, where his father lives.
One wonders how the Lisbon lingo will have evolved by then and what other languages will influence it along the way.
Independent On Saturday