A ChiLomwe girls’ song from Malawi, popular as a pounding song (sung by women using mortar and pestle to pound grain to flour). The bell is a bicycle bell.
I heard a bell ngili-ngili at the corner:
I thought it was my boyfriend, the son of Chipo,
I am ashamed, eeh!
from Oral Poetry from Africa 1984
compiled by Jack Mapanje and Landeg White,
Longman
