ABSTRACT
When I first began to do fieldwork among the Shona-speaking Manyika of Zimbabwe about ten years ago, I tried to find a word that would correspond to the English concept ‘morality’. I explained what I meant by asking my informants to describe the norms for good behaviour toward other people. The answer was unanimous. The word for this was tsika. But when I asked my bilingual informants to translate tsika into English, they said that it was ‘good manners’. And whenever I asked somebody to define tsika, they would say: ‘Tsika is the proper way to greet people’, or ‘Tsika is to show respect’.
