Chimbuzi.

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I grew up referring to the smallest room in the house as the chimbuzi, and no without good cause. At that time I lived in 1960s rural Malawi among people who spoke Tumbuku, so why would I use the English word? Generally at home it was abbreviated to the chim. “I’m going to the chim”, we were often heard saying, or “How long are you going to be in the chim? I’m bursting to go”. Fast forward to secondary school in Ireland when I was about 15 and homesick for Africa, much to the chagrin of my Irish relatives who just didn’t get that I wanted to be back home in Malawi rather than in Ireland. My head always was elsewhere, and I clearly remember being asked by an irate and peevish maths teacher where a class mate was. I knew the answer to his question (when it came to maths I never knew the answer to his questions, at least not the correct ones) because I had seen him go into the toilet. “He’s in the chim”, I told the teacher, lapsing into the mélange of English and Tumbuku that my sentences usually consisted of. The teacher thought I said that the boy was at the gym and fell on him like a pile of bricks when he appeared from the toilet and berated him gustily for playing games when he ought to have been in maths class. The poor boy was totally bewildered, especially since he wasn’t the kind of boy who would ever be found in the gym. Only later did I realise my part in the grand confusion, but I thought my explanation would just further confuse things so t let it pass.