If there’s one thing Zimbabweans try to maintain respect for, it’s our food. Come debilitating inflation or excruciating food shortages, we each attempt to maintain a regular meal schedule. This isn’t easy, of course, but it is worth the effort.
In our culture, and I’m sure in many others, food does not merely constitute a nourishing component of life. Our get-togethers reflect the levels of social unity that I’m proud to say the people of Zimbabwe still firmly possess.
On a recent work-related visit to a rural homestead, for example, I met a woman who didn’t have much to share. As we sat on a grass mat in her mud-hut rondavel, she served a few colleagues and me plates of warm samp and home-made tomato and onion gravy, accompanied by piping hot cups of milky tea. It was a simple meal — and she really could have done with saving this food for lunch-time later on.
In Shona culture, whenever someone is eating something, the polite statement we always make is ”Tirikudya [we are eating]”. And this is exactly what one of our boisterous neighbours announces as she peers through our half-open kitchen window with a plate of just-fried sweet potato chips or vetkoek in hand.
The statement is a way of inviting those around you to partake of whatever food you might be eating, and for someone to refuse this offer can appear disrespectful unless the defence of satiety is used. Otherwise, the courteous thing to do is either to taste a few morsels or to tuck into the shared dish.
I love my food and that’s the defence I will always use for my plumpness. But even more than that, I love the hands that come together to make it and the beautiful acts of sharing this involves.
When my family visits my grandmother in her rural home in the mountains of Chimanimani, we sit in the semi-darkness of her mud-hut kitchen chopping tomatoes and onions over an enamel plate, exchanging news and hilarious anecdotes from all the months we have been apart.
Once the pot of water set over the hissing fire boils, someone is given the task of running it over the limp feathered carcass of the chicken recently selected and beheaded by my grandmother for our evening meal. When all the feathers are plucked, the chicken is jointed and cooked and a big pot of gurgling mealie paste — soon to be thickened to make sadza (pap) – is prepared.
All of this — as well as the consumption of the meal and the cleaning-up afterwards – takes place amid incessant laughter and chatter. As we retire to the main house for the night, the lovely smell of wood smoke remains embedded in our clothing to remind us of the precious time just spent together.
Fungai Machirori is a journalist, researcher, poet and short story writer. She lives in Harare
