The Delights of the Braai!

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My oh my do I have a story to tell about my first Saturday....
Well it began with me waking up far too early, so I thought I'd visit my hosts from July, Nelly and Primrose. Unfortunately, Primrose, the lady I stayed with, wasn't in, but Baba, her husband was, so I said sawubona etc and told him I'd call back the next day to see her. I popped next door to see Nelly, who was sitting outside her house with her poorly son on her lap, don't worry though, he's better now - the joys of writing a blog post weeks after it happened! Her reaction was classic - she stared right through me for ages, then when I said "sawubona" started squealing that she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her! Clearly no-one mentioned I was back! We caught up for a while, for those who know Nelly, keep reading, if you don't, feel free to skip to the next paragraph. She shared about how since we were last there, she has had been quite poorly & they found a tumour in her bladder, but it's been removed & she's made a full recovery. Also her husband refused to let her come to the Family Centre because of the problems, but she did promise she'd try to come back now everything's all sorted. If you have any questions you want me to ask her, please feel free, I pop in quite regularly.
On with the story, I still had a couple of hours to kill, and given my new found, Patsy shaped freedom, I decided I'd pop into Howick to "explore". Well, I was fine at first, knew where I was n all, happily cruising around (very carefully & observantly Mother), I remembered the way the taxi's went to take us to Howick in July. Well actually, I remembered the way a little too well and ended up in the taxi rank, blocked in by taxi's, which are actually all minibuses with mental drivers & quite intimidating when they're surrounding you! I could feel everyone stop what they were doing to look at the silly Mlungu who'd got lost in the wrong part of town. I pride myself on never getting lost, well never getting stressed about getting lost anyway, which usually means I find my way back quite quickly. Given the involuntary stopping, however, there was plenty of time to panic before I pulled myself together and rationally pulled out to continue onto a road I knew. Phew. I thought of texting Helen Snr to ask for prayer! Not really, I shall save that for real emergencies!
So, that did kill a fair chunk of time anyway, so I thought I may as well head back to safe territory, the township - how ironic! I had arranged to meet Nhlaka somewhere easy to find so he could direct me to Zwe's, not easy to find! I followed his directions to where we were supposed to meet and found myself in the middle of what seemed to be a rather noisy & not particularly friendly political rally, how do I get myself into these things? I waited around for a while, but Zwe sent Lindiwe down to pick me up in the end because it was probably not the best place for a white chick to be on her own! I find it enormously frustrating being directed around here, mostly because people generally, with the exception occasionally of Nhlaka, tell you once you gone past a turning "go left there", which leaves you with the dilemma of whether to reverse or turn round, both risky given the sudden, unpredictable appearance of goats, cows, children or all 3! We eventually made it through the myriad of tiny streets, which I'm convinced are all the same and God plays a clever tick with mirrors or something, to arrive at Zwe's house, the next issue being where to park!
Dumping Patsy in the street, I went into Zwe's yard to discover a group of men directly in front of me and a group of women further in. Not wanting to be rude, I went to greet the men quickly, thinking I could then sit with the women guilt free. No such luck. The men had clearly cracked open a bottle or 2 of Smirnoff earlier and were now rather worse for wear. Within seconds, a guy grabbed hold of me, pulled me closer & whispered that he wanted to tell me a secret. Not entirely sure at this point what the culturally sensitive way of dealing with this situation was, but thinking it probably wasn't screaming and stamping on the blokes foot, I said I was sure there'd be nothing he had to tell me he couldn't tell his friends and managed a lucky escape. It was, however, a sign of things to come.
I decided I'd definitely be safer with the ladies and went off in search of Gugu to find out what I could do to help in the kitchen. It's funny that wherever I go, if I'm looking for Gugu, I always check the kitchen first, I'm sure it's her natural habitat, she doesn't go in other rooms! I popped out to the car to get my cake to put it in the kitchen out of the heat & all the ladies complimented me on my creativity, which means it probably looked terrible! Safe for a while with the ladies, I observed them, busying themselves, getting ready for the party. I felt quite isolated, not being able to speak much of the language and they clearly had better things to do than to translate & entertain me! So, I sat quietly in the sun, observing.
It was at this time, lost in my own little world, that I caught a whiff of a familiar, disgusting smell, similar to what I imagine rotting bodies to smell like, but I couldn't quite place it. I turned round to see the biggest pan I've ever laid my eyes on in the middle of the yard, with one of the men holding the lid and smiling at me. "Meat?" he said, innocently enough. "What kind of meat?" I responded cautiously, this is Africa after all. "Just meat" was the reply, so I thought, foolishly I'd go have a look. It was indeed the source of the smell, what looked like the entire insides of a cow. "Oh" I said, "I'm alright actually, not too hungry". Tripe is a delicacy over here. I've only ever come across it cut into pieces before, so I was a bit shocked to find I could still recognise whole organs. A bit of a disagreement took place where the man tried to force me to eat the tripe, but I assured him I had tried it before and had quite a hard job keeping it down, so I'd give it a miss this time. Eventually he shrugged and gave up, and began hacking it into palm sized pieces & putting it out on a tray where all the men gathered round, picked up a piece and started gnawing on it. Honestly, it was one of the most disgusting sights I've ever seen, a grown man with half a cows throat in his mouth, eeew. There was now no escape from the pack of men as they had migrated in my direction. One of them, still chewing guts, stuck his hand out for me to shake, but I refused given that his hand was covered in stinky tripe. He tried to force me, but luckily I was rescued by another guy who told him off for being impolite, I smiled gratefully at him and the first guy pulled up his trouser leg and wiped most of the tripe onto his leg, then stuck his hand out again. The nice man again told him off and I escaped, tripe free. I can't help but think that man had a tripey leg all night, he must have emitted an awful smell by the end of the party!
Zwe eventually came back from the Family Centre where he had been setting up as that was where the Braai was to be held. I told him about tripe man and he just laughed at me and said I would have to learn to get myself out of these situations, which kind of makes me think there's going to be a lot more to come! I helped carry the food into the cars & bakkies available after it had been cooked in Zwe's kitchen. These pans were giant sized, without a word of a lie I reckon I could have curled up in 1 and put the lid on! Finally Zwe went to get the cake, not my cute little marshmallowy creation, I mean his real cake to take down. Oh my word, it was enormous! Seems they don't do things by halves! It must have been 4' x 3' and it took 2 strong men to lift it, I was in heaven! All the drinks got loaded into Patsy and off we went.
I have to be honest, I didn't really experience much of the party, mainly because I was the only white person there so everyone stared at my every move, so I mostly did a Gugu and hid in the kitchen serving up phutu and chakalaka! It was nice to get to know the other young ladies in hiding though, lots of Zwe's friends and his sister. Amongst this group, I felt quite at home, like the differences between us were not quite so evident. On the rare occasions I ventured out, I had marriage proposals and men declaring their love for me. I get a bit frustrated sometimes because none of the other girls had that, and if I was black they wouldn't be saying these things. I guess what frustrates me is that I know I'm no better than the other girls, I just wish they all knew that too! I suppose it's the after effects of apartheid, it will take a very long time for these mentalities to be broken down. I also seem to have been given the seat of honour, right at the end of the tent, with Zwe and his Mama, I'm still not entirely sure what I was doing there! One old Gogo (Granny) came up to me and asked if I was married, I replied no, I'm not, to which she told me that I am, apparently I'm married to Zwe. I'm wondering whether I entered into some sort of marital contract by sitting at the top table!
The Braai was unlike any Zulu function I'd been to before or since. The tent was decorated beautifully, with drapes disguising its natural appearance and beautiful drapes over the tables and chairs also. There was an abundance of food, which, actually, is the same as every other Zulu function! The music was like very, very loud dance music rather than the usual Zulu, rap or r 'n' b I'm used to here, and their dancing was certainly not like I'd seen them dance before! Even the old Gogo was up there shakin her thang, in fact I think she was first on the dance floor! We partied until the sun went down (about 5:45pm) then packed up and went home! I kid you not, I helped clear up until the very end, then took the last few people home & even I was home by 7:30pm! It seemed to end so abruptly, one minute, the chairs are being cleared away to make more room to dance, and the next the music's off and the elephant sized speakers are being packed away whilst people make their way home!
I later found out that the reason such a big fuss was being made is that it was Zwe's "21st". He was actually 24, although his ID says he's now 25, but when he really turned 21, his family couldn't afford a party, so they postponed it until they knew they could do it in style! It's incredible to think that they paid for all of it, I can't even begin to describe how much meat there was on the Braai. Well, I'll try. To put it into context, 200 people had been invited, although I think a lot of them weren't told about the venue change, so there was probably a Zwe-free birthday party at his house too! Anyway, they have these huge enamel bowls at the Centre, probably the size of a car wheel, and there were 2 of those full of meat! That actually wasn't that hard to describe!
Well, it certainly was an extremely eventful, but very very fun day!

Over n out

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