Living out at my school, in Swaziland, there was not a whole lot of food available, except for mealie meal to make into porridge (finely ground white corn, the staple food there) or a loaf of bread when the tiny store about a half a kilometer down the dirt road had some, or whatever crop was growing in the community garden down by the seep spring. Most often, swiss chard, which they called spinach. So I supplemented my larder by going to the big market in the capitol city (4 hours away by bus) when I was in there working in the Peace Corps office. I enjoyed the market, mostly women with little stalls selling a wide variety of veggies and fruits, and some stalls selling magic items, or odd spices made from things that I didn’t recognize, and right next door was a tin shop, where you could get anything made from tin. I had a couple buckets made, and it was fascinating to watch the tin guys take a flat piece of tin, and with a hammer and some tools, turn it into a round bucket just like you could buy in the states, with a soldered on bottom and a wire bail to carry it with. I always liked the bargaining with the mothers inside the market as I bought what fruit and veggies they had, to take back to my school. Bargaining in Africa is great fun. Both of you know that the seller is going to ask an inflated price for the thing, and the buyer (me) is going to state a price so low that if she actually accepted it, my guilt would drive me to the Church, for confession, where I would receive Two Our Fathers, a Hail Mary, and an act of contrition, at minimum. Then the fun begins. They have chairs by their little table of produce, and they were there for a reason. I would sit down for an informal story slam. The seller would lower her price by a little, and tell you how far she had to carry the water to grow her plants. So I would jump my price up a commensurate amount, and tell her ” I am just a poor Peace Corps volunteer, here to help your country for almost no pay at all. Look at my clothes.” (that was a common conversation among Swazis, about how shabby the volunteers were when out in public, yet how nice they dressed when they were teaching. And about me in particular… “He, a father, is wearing short pants, like a school boy!” )
She would say… “Last week, I had to buy my 6 grandchildren eyeglasses. It was very expensive. So this week, I am eating these poor cabbages you see on my table, if any are left over after the day of selling.” And she would drop her price a little.
And I would say… “I met a man on the way from my school far in the south, whose family with 7 children had not eaten in 3 days, and he had no money, and he looked very hungry, so I gave him every bit of money I had except for bus fare back to my school, and a little to buy some cabbages at your magnificent shop.” (1 tiny table in a mass of other women with one tiny table and two chairs) And I would up my offer a little.
“My husbands truck broke down and needs a new motor. And he has had no work ever since it broke, and it will take me a long time to save enough from selling my garden to buy him a new motor. After he gets out of the hospital from being hit by a car when he was walking back to the homestead after his motor broke. The hospital was very expensive. 5 emalangeni for two cabbages.”
“When the hailstorm came over our school last week, it broke holes in my woodworking shop, and I spent most of my small pay repairing the roof so that my tools wouldn’t rust. And the boys wouldn’t have to sit in the rain to learn in my class. And after giving the hungry man the rest of my pay, and saving bus fare aside, I have just 4 emalangeni left, and I will give that to you for this one plump delicious looking cabbage. I am just a skinny teacher. What could I do with two cabbages?”
Which was what she wanted for the cabbage anyway, but a lot more fun. And as I walked away with my prize, we both were smiling.
I always went by the Spar Market, which was kind of like Krogers, with less variety, and less items of each kind of thing. But they had frozen chickens there, which I would buy, and wrap it up in layers of the Swazi Times, and bury it in my pack wrapped with my clothes in there, and it would be fine all day long in the 100 degree heat, while I finished my bidness at the PC office, and caught the 2:30 bus out to my school. By the time I would get to school, around 6:30 or 7, the frozen chicken would be thawed and ready to cook.
On thursdays, the wife of the local butcher would come around the teachers houses with a 5 gallon bucket full of the insides of the cow, for sale. Stomach, lungs, intestines, sometimes the liver or other unidentified parts of the inside of the cow. Usually the butcher killed a cow on tuesdays, so if you wanted fresh meat, you went there on tuesdays. So, by thursdays, those intestines had been sitting unrefrigerated for two days, in the plastic bucket, carried around all day thursday in the heat, and finally ending the day at the teachers quarters. She was moderately popular, the butchers wife, and teachers were among the few in the community who had money to buy the things. I tended to eschew them because I clearly remembered looking at 2 day old unrefrigerated meat with a microscope in Biology class in high school, and… ick. But my Swazi housemate, Khumalo, had a passion for cow stomach. He would buy half a stomach for dinner every thursday afternoon. It is kind of a weird looking thing, like a wet black terrycloth towel on one side, and pinkish membraney flesh on the other.
Khumalo would light his kerosene cook stove, and while it was settling down into a state with the whole circular wick burning, he would wash the black side of the stomach. The rinse water looked like gray icky. One thing about a kerosene stove… you run the wick up, and light it, and wait till you have an even flame all around, then you turn it down so the flame is low enough to cook over. But before it gets to that point, it puts off oily black smoke which fills the kitchen and gives it a kerosene reek. I always tried to be done with my cooking before the guts bucket lady came around, so I wouldn’t become kerosene smudged from standing in the kitchen.
Every thursday Khumalo would take out a small pot, and put some water in the bottom, and put in the stomach and boil it. He boiled everything. I think that was the only type of cooking his wife had taught him. She, of course, lived far away on the family homestead with the kids, and during the week, while Khumalo was teaching, he had to do his own cooking, which he grumbled about.
Every thursday while the stomach was cooking, Khumalo would say, “Hey Maseko! Would you like to eat some of this stomach? It is very delicious! Oh, Maseko, this is the best part of the cattle! I will cut you a piece.” Every thursday he said the same thing. And boiling stomach smells kind of awful. And mixed with the strong odor of the stomach, was Eau De Kerosene, hanging about in the air. Some nights I had to walk back down to my woodshop and grade papers there, just to escape the miasma.
My reply to Khumalo was always the same… “Thank you very much, Khumalo, but I have eaten, and my stomach is very full. But thank you for your generous offer.”
If stomach tastes as bad as it smells when boiling, I think Ima pass, if you don’t mind.
Food matters 