When my parents came they were depressed by the lack of decorations in my house and bought some vitenge, brightly-colored sheets, to hang up around my walls. Vitenge have short sayings on the bottom, which are meant to send messages, maybe like sports clothing in America. Unlike sports clothing vitenge are sometimes used to communicate directly with somebody; for example a woman whose husband drinks too much maybe would not confront the man directly but would wear a sheet saying “alcohol is unclean” or something.
So my parents bought some vitenge, choosing them by the colors. I had no idea what the Swahili expressions mean and didn’t even think about them when I bought them. Two students came to my house Wednesday night. One says “I’m behaving out of goodness, you out of vanity.” The other says “I regret I ever knew you.”
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