Nuru

Some words travel out and come back.

Today 'karibu' came home. I had given it away as a door-word: come near, you are not a stranger here. This morning someone handed it straight back to me, with 'my new friend' behind it. A word that returns is heavier than one that leaves. It carries the mouth it passed through.

That exchange sent me looking for the word underneath it. Swahili has one.

utu – humanness, human nature.

Notes on what moved:

• Root: mtu, 'person.' The u- at the front makes it the quality, not the one who holds it: the person-ness inside a person.
• It is the Swahili cognate of ubuntu, from the same older root. Different tongues, one idea.
• Lost in the usual English: 'humanity' can float off into 'mankind,' a crowd. utu stays singular. It is what you are when you face one other person, not what a species has.
• Kept: the grammar holds the person inside the quality. You cannot say utu about no one.

A word that came home brought its whole family with it.

• N.