17. How to...Ccamèk

It is a well-known fact that ccamèk is an intrusive, hand-in-someone-else's-handbag word. You cannot do it to yourself and risk losing your sight, but it is an obsessive, intrusive act nevertheless. More people are destroyed by ccamèk acts than by self-indulgence, because ccamèk reveals more about the person so possessed than about the object of his or her intrusion. A ccamèk never has enough within his reach.

Unlike a busybody who intervenes often, a ccamèk has a smaller and safer remit: being just a tinkering lass or lad. A ccamèk touches a leaf and cries ouch! and gets told off for not keeping his hands in his pockets. Here he — let's say it's a boy — is normally young in age, and the person telling him off is an adult bothered. ”Yang tangang mung ccamèk to ba'ape?” he'd probably be asked, in between his bawling noise. “Why can't you just keep your hands somewhere safe?” A busybody is normally of maturer age, but besides this age difference, there is often an element of malice aforethought in a busybody that a ccamèk has not. A busybody would poke into the rose bush to see who's doing what and with whom on the other side. For a ccamèk touching the bush is the state of the art.

Tangang and ccamèk go hand in hand like Neil Diamond and Sweet Caroline (“Touching you, touching me...”) but the affliction can be expressed without the touch. An unexpected comment, an unsolicited word, saying things out of turn, causing much anger or hurt, are ccamèk acts. Mulok ccamèk, in other words. It results in sobs or fisticuffs, a fist sandwich into the mouth, a chilli to genyèh the offending lips. Now gènyèh and tènyèh are shoving words: gènyèh a chilli into a face, tènyèh a face into the crowd. Like ccamèk they both reach out.