Essential Portuguese phrases

The name of Cabinda's own Bantu language, a cluster whose dialects include Iwoyo, Kiyombe, Kakongo, Ikochi, Ilinje, Kisundi and Ivili. The name was settled by the Cabindan diaspora in Bas-Zaïre after 1975, and using it rather than 'fiote' signals you have listened to somebody here.

The older name outsiders give the language. It literally means 'black', and tchifiote means 'the language of black people' — which is precisely why many Cabindans reject it and correct you. Say Ibinda; it costs nothing and it lands.

The traditional name of Cabinda city, still used in songs, on shopfronts and by people asserting a Cabindan rather than an Angolan frame. You will meet it long before anyone explains it.

The rainforest filling the province's north and the national park inside it — Angola's share of the Congo Basin, home to western lowland gorillas and forest elephants. It is also a byword here for 'up-country', with everything that implies about roads and about who controls them.

To work, with a distinct edge of grind. In an oil province where 'working offshore' and 'working in town' are two different lives, it usually means the second.

House, home, place. From Kimbundu but universal across Angola, including here.

Money. 'Não tenho kumbu' — I'm broke. You will hear it far more than 'dinheiro'.

'We're together.' The Angolan sign-off, used the same way in Cabinda as in Luanda — ending a call, a meeting, a message. It carries an obligation rather than just warmth.

An elder, or anyone senior enough to be owed deference; used as a title before a name. Age order structures who speaks first in a room here at least as firmly as it does in Luanda.

A kid, and by extension an adult acting like one. The counterpart to kota.

A problem, a dispute, trouble. 'Há maka' flags that something has gone wrong without naming it — a useful vagueness in a province where some subjects are handled carefully.

To leave, to clear off. 'Bora bazar.' Nothing to do with a marketplace.

The staple cassava porridge, eaten by hand and dipped. On this coast it comes with fish more often than with chicken — Cabinda's cooking leans hard on the Atlantic and on dendém, red palm oil.

Chicken in red palm oil with okra, garlic and jindungo chilli — the national dish, and the safe first order anywhere in Angola.

Chilli, and the sauce made from it that sits on the table. The food is not itself hot; you make it hot at the plate. Ask for it.