The experiences of Little Boy
Setting: Its 1960 at a boarding primary school in rural Zimbabwe.
Little Boy gets three meals a day; mealie meal porridge in the morning, sadza and greens or meat in the afternoon and sadza and green or meat in the evening. By the time Little boy had reached the tender age of 11 (probably in grade 6 at this time). The morning meal is no longer sufficient.
What to do, what to do???
"I will save half of my evening sadza"
"How? its illegal to take it back to the dorm"
"I will hid it in the hedge till morning"
The remaining portion of sadza would then be hid in the hedge, a silent prayer would follow...
"Please look after my Sadza, if anyone attempts to steal it may they hear a loud terrifying voice saying "You are surrounded by armed policemen, drop the Sadza NOW"
Little boy would then go to sleep and having dreams about cold sadza hidden in a hedge.
Morning would come and little boy would walk to the river and walk back, without taking bath the walk was intended to achieve.
"The river water is just too cold, I will bath on Saturday" This being on a Monday...
Little boy would then make his way to the hedge to collect his sadza and walk to the dinning hall.
He would mix his sadza with the sugarless porridge that the school provided. He would then add some sugar which he had bought from the local grocery store. (with his 25c a term pocket money)
Once in a while the school would slaughter a cow to provide meat for the boys; here is the funny bit. Remember there was no refrigeration at this time.
Day 1: Offals
Day 2: Offals
Day 3: funny tasting meat
Day 4: rotten meat
Day 5: very rotten meat
Day 6: extremely rotten meat
Day 7: its back to vegetables.
This was the cycle....
Honestly the school authorities could have either cured the meat and feed the boys biltong.
Or maybe if that was too much work for them, they could have at least given them fresh steak on Day 1 as opposed to giving them fresh offals twice and rotten steak 5 times????
Ohh well, Little boy discovered chillies and used these to rid the meat of its bad taste. he could do little about the worms though.
There were mango trees around the school but Little boy was forbidden from picking those from the tree, he had to wait until they were rotten and had fallen to the ground. Sometimes, if no one was watching Little boy would "force" a mango to fall and then pick it up from the ground.
Poor Little Boy...
Little Boy gets three meals a day; mealie meal porridge in the morning, sadza and greens or meat in the afternoon and sadza and green or meat in the evening. By the time Little boy had reached the tender age of 11 (probably in grade 6 at this time). The morning meal is no longer sufficient.
What to do, what to do???
"I will save half of my evening sadza"
"How? its illegal to take it back to the dorm"
"I will hid it in the hedge till morning"
The remaining portion of sadza would then be hid in the hedge, a silent prayer would follow...
"Please look after my Sadza, if anyone attempts to steal it may they hear a loud terrifying voice saying "You are surrounded by armed policemen, drop the Sadza NOW"
 |
| The arrest of the Sadza thief |
Little boy would then go to sleep and having dreams about cold sadza hidden in a hedge.
Morning would come and little boy would walk to the river and walk back, without taking bath the walk was intended to achieve.
"The river water is just too cold, I will bath on Saturday" This being on a Monday...
Little boy would then make his way to the hedge to collect his sadza and walk to the dinning hall.
He would mix his sadza with the sugarless porridge that the school provided. He would then add some sugar which he had bought from the local grocery store. (with his 25c a term pocket money)
Once in a while the school would slaughter a cow to provide meat for the boys; here is the funny bit. Remember there was no refrigeration at this time.
Day 1: Offals
Day 2: Offals
Day 3: funny tasting meat
Day 4: rotten meat
Day 5: very rotten meat
Day 6: extremely rotten meat
Day 7: its back to vegetables.
This was the cycle....
Honestly the school authorities could have either cured the meat and feed the boys biltong.
Or maybe if that was too much work for them, they could have at least given them fresh steak on Day 1 as opposed to giving them fresh offals twice and rotten steak 5 times????
Ohh well, Little boy discovered chillies and used these to rid the meat of its bad taste. he could do little about the worms though.
There were mango trees around the school but Little boy was forbidden from picking those from the tree, he had to wait until they were rotten and had fallen to the ground. Sometimes, if no one was watching Little boy would "force" a mango to fall and then pick it up from the ground.
Poor Little Boy...
This is awful but at the same time, offals decompose faster than the rest of the cow, so it was more 'hygienic' to feed them offal first
ReplyDeleteand forego the rest of the cow just to save the offals....?
ReplyDelete