A post about a cat: n misen jeman sungurun

Jema - This is a story about her name, with a bit thrown in about how we met.

In the late 80's, I moved to Seattle. As part of a political action community, at that time, it wasn't very difficult to find a rental among like minded folks. The house I moved in to was big, in a "bad" part of town & was occupied by a public defender, a massage therapist & an aspiring botanist/merchant. There were two dogs, Carmine & Comet. Carmine was a big ol' lab sweetie, though she could be fiesty at times. Comet was very pretty (can't recall his breed) and was renown for his recent kill of a hapless lamb. Shortly after I moved in, Comet & his person moved out, leaving a vacancy we were eager to fill.

A friend of a friend knew of someone coming back from Mali, from the Peace Corps. By that time, I had become close to the botanist/merchant & to this day, our lasting gripe about this character who became our next roomie was that he insisted that we pronounce his name the French way, being I guess new to the States from Canada & having suffered from an insistant & dull American pronounciation during a brief period of American living in his youth. We heard he doesn't so much insist on that now, which is the reason why we gripe. Consistency, people! Anyway, he worked as an environmental scientist, testing water tables & pollutant levels in areas around Western Washington.

One day, coming home from school, I heard a scratching and small sounds coming from somewhere in the house. After checking the dog and wandering a bit, it became obvious that the sound was coming from Phillipe's room. I cracked the door when the scratching increased as I approached. A white kitten peered around the door.

I am a sucker for cats. I was a sucker for this one. I picked her up & she made herself comfortable. She purred. I was a total goner. You may have seen her, she is pretty.

I spoke with Phillipe, who had found her in a swamp on a day where the full moon was visible. We guessed she was about two months old. I asked if I could have her & we agreed that it was ok. Next, we set her in the same room with Carmine, to see if I could actually have her. Carmine lay on the ground with her person as I brought Jema into room. Jema was fearless & went right up to Carmine. Carmine, evidently, was a sucker for this cat. She was fine with Jema & for the two or three years that they lived together, they found a bunch of ways to entertain themselves, regardless of the scale issues of big lab dog & small cat.

Now that it was clear that Jema could stay, I needed a name for her. As Phillipe had just returned from Mali, I asked for his help in picking a name for her in the language used most commonly in Mali. I did not know that French was the most common language, or that Bambara came in second. I did know what I wanted to call her; my little white girlfriend. She was so dainty and friendly, it seemed like a fun name for me to know I was saying. After a while of thinking, Phillipe said "n'Jema" was the part he could figure out. "n" being "My" & "Jema" being the rest. I was content with that & figured that I would explore more on my own. Since this was years before the internet & my contact with Malians has not included lots of time to ask questions about my cats name, it's taken a bit to catch up.

For years, I have been calling her Jema - n'jema is really the spelling. The internet has caught up with Bambara & I have her full name now from the online Lexicon. Jema is close to the Bambara for white & I suppose I've been calling her "My white" for all this time.

I like to think he bailed on the Bambara & went with the Swahili for "good", which is n'jema (as in "n'jema Safari!" a phrase travelers would be familiar with). It would be nice to think I've been calling her good all this time. So, what I discovered is that "my little white girlfriend" in Bambara is n misen jeman sungurun. That's a literal translation, I don't know the order of adjectives or other grammatical nuances, especially for sentence fragments.

Once I figure out how to pronounce and construct the name, I'll give it a shot... until then...

I'm getting the hang of comments these days. Feel free to leave a story of your pet(s) name & how you got it, if you like.