Black lettering reading Hakuna Matata above a bold black circle with a spiked tail and three dots, tattooed on the side of the ribs.

Hakuna Matata script and circle on ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows the words Hakuna Matata in black cursive script, arched above a thick black ring with a pointed, looped stroke crossing its lower left and three small dots to its right. The linework is solid and even, with no shading, and the design is entirely black ink on pale skin. It is framed close to the subject on the side of the torso, with the ribs and a dark garment edge visible at the right.

Lettering Ribs Script Circle Dot Symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had the lamp room to herself the morning the cage stopped at four hundred feet, and she counted the brass checks twice before she let herself look at the window. Three men were still below. The winding wheel sat quiet against the grey sky, its big iron ring black with rain, and the rope that ran through it hung slack where the engineman had thrown the brake.

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Her uncle Dai had taught the boys to say the Swahili phrase a couple of summers back, after a film with a lion in it. The lads thought it was daft. Nobody in Ashgrove had ever been further south than Cardiff, but the words stuck the way everything stuck in a pit village, and by winter they were chalked on the stable door and scrawled across the lamp board: no worries, no worries. Dai said it meant no trouble, and that was a lie the whole village agreed to tell.

When the cage bell finally rang three times, Nell pulled the lever and watched the needle swing. Her hands were steady. Up came Owen first, grey to the eyebrows, then Tomos, then old Gwyn, who swore he would not be carried. Each one stepped out and touched the lamp hooks, one, two, three, the way the dots on the old wheel plate had always been counted.

Dai was last. He came out last every time, because he said somebody had to check the cage was empty. He looked at her and then at the sky, and he grinned with his whole face. 'All right, Nell,' he said. 'Hakuna matata.' It was the first time she had heard him say it without a joke in it.