Makhulu, Makhulu, thatha nali izinyo undiphe elinye- this used to be a plea from a gradescholer after teething or losing one of his/her teeth. This is what we call uku khumka ngesiXhosa. Ukumilisa on the other hand is when a baby is growing teeth for the first time (teething). With modernisation and with us black people in South Africa drifting away from our traditions and culture we have been engulfed by the Tooth Fairy.
The Oxford Dictionary describes the tooth fairy as "an imaginary creature that is said to take away a tooth that a small child leaves near his or her bed at night and to leave a coin there in its place." This on its own sounds absurd until you have to also play along. As a child I experienced ukukhumka and I threw teeth on the roof of my home in Mdantsane and asked u Makhulu for izinyo.
This practice is about asking your grandmother to take your old tooth and give you a new one. Grandmothers in the isiXhosa culture are known to be nurturers,t the backbone of the family. They love and take care of everyone. It, therefore, makes sense to ask one of the most loving person in a family setting for a new tooth. The only form of reward the child gets from u Makhulu is a new tooth. science and biology teaches us that the tooth was likely to grow back anyway.
Now the tooth fairy is not only imaginary like uMakhulu, it is also a creature. In my understanding, a creature is what one would call isilo, and isilo is a sacred being whether it comes to you with good or bad intentions. To then allow children to accept money from a sacred being or for a parent to act as a sacred creature has an element of megalomania.
This tooth fairy phenomenon also brings about the obsession with money as the only reward. From a young age, we are teaching our children that they have to be rewarded with money. We then get shocked when they become obsessed with money.
I still prefer u Makhulu, which taught our children that you have to ask your elders and not every reward is financial. Having a new tooth should be a gratifying reward on its own.
Anyway, my preference is not always the way to go, as I have learned recently, with two teething Gradescholars I learnt this the hard way. u Makhulu to my boys (my Mother) recently unilaterally increase the tooth fairy reward by more than 100 percent.
The thing is I sometimes try to accommodate the western culture. In my home, we still ask u Makhulu for teeth, the children go through all the steps of asking for a tooth from u Makhulu, and still, also get the reward from the greedy western culture creature, after all, South Africa is a capitalist state, the children have to learn about these western cultures, which are tooth fairy and capitalism.
The more than 100 percent increase just post the Covid 19 pandemic financial increase and the state of the country's economy has left me paralysed financially. I am not one to allow a situation to get better off, so I am using this tooth fairy greed to teach the boys about saving. This then leaves me with a question, how much are we going to bend backwards in the name of modernity? The Western Culture has taken its propaganda to the big screen and our children are bombarded with it daily. Famous wrestler turned actor Dawne "The Rock" Johnson recently made a movie about the tooth fairy, something which made this creature more famous.
As parents are we betraying our children by forsaking what we were taught by our parents? These are the parents who under difficult circumstances of racial oppression when their rights were being trampled on daily, stood their ground and protected their culture. As the free generation living in a democratic country, we have used our access to shift further away from our tradition and life as taught to us. We have betrayed the teachings of our parents. Who will this modernity serve?
Sibunikele umva ubuthina maxa wonke avelayo. We have been fortunate to know our roots but we have now digging them out and handing over our children to western society. When the late great Busi Mhlongo asked asked if ingane kamalume ingaba izalwa ngabamhlophe na, we focused on the child that could not speak his or her indigenous language but forgot to ask u malume what role did he play in the child's miseducation.
We have regained our political independency, is using it to teach our children the best we can do with it?
