Sadza ne nyama

Very rarely is food just something to eat. Culture cloaks it with infinite gradations of meaning, elaborates or adorns it in many ways. Culture prescribes when we should feel hungry, i.e., the proper mealtimes; it prescribes what foods are appropriate to which hour (porridge and marmalade do not belong to the dinner table) or to the occasion; the manner of serving them, the sequence in which they follow each other (soup first, sweets last).

The contact of white culture with that of the African disturbed and disrupted traditional food habits. For instance there was a widespread shift from millet (rukweza) to mealie meal as a result, among other reasons, of the labour saving effect of buying meal. This change was encouraged by the absence of men at work throwing added economic burdens on the women. Its significance was the release of women from the arduous task of crushing grain.

The fact that the African has lived in Africa for centuries justifies us in assuming that the food he has learned to acquire, identify and grow was adequate enough to maintain life over hundreds of years in his specific living conditions such as consumption of human energy, hours of work, recreation and rest, seasonal change, etc.

The white man came and promptly began to disturb the old balance between native life and food. In employment the African labourer found himself called upon, with ever increasing stress, to expend an amount of energy, to maintain a rhythm of labour under white supervision out of all proportion to the contribution of energy, vitality and health made by his food.

From the paced life of the kraal with its unregulated, personal control of manual labour based on impulse and inclination, to the eight to twelve hour working periods under white supervision is a revolutionary change demanding an equally revolutionary dietary change.

Food consumption in the kraal was controlled and distributed through the months of the year by a woman wise in housewifery. Grain was stored in a bin called a dura, and the aim of all preceding agricultural activity was to fill these bins.

It was accepted that only an old woman, not any woman, could properly control the issue of food from a grain bin. The novice would issue too much, the bin would be emptied too soon and hunger would arise.

All wives had their bins; but from the main bin, the husband's bin which is the kraal's reservoir, no one but the chief wife (vahosi) could draw grain. As the minor bins were exhausted in the course of the year so each wife came to depend on the chief wife and her control of the principal bin.

On a woman's judgment and experience depended the food consumption of the kraal and if we remember that she budgeted for the whole year while the white housewife was concerned with a weekly or monthly wage, we can appreciate the degree of skill required. The African man had as little share in this sphere of knowledge as his white counterpart.

That the whole scheme of food activity was a very precarious and hazardous business in African life is shown by the prevalence of magic. Some further safeguard to skill and care must be found if widespread and constant anxiety is not only to oppress the kraal to dull initiative and energy in food activity.

Relief was sought in magic and that there was medicine called divisi in all grain bins may be taken for granted unless, as sometimes happens, one was so unfortunate as to be unable to acquire it and so ran a grave risk.

This divisi, this life insurance as we may call it, was once a human head. It was obtained from medicine men and from the Zambezi river monster Nyaminyami. It had two uses. Like a fertiliser it was put in the lands to ensure good crops and quick growth.

It was also put in grain bins to ensure that the grain was not finished too soon and also that you got maximum satisfaction out of eating it, i.e., you felt full on a little.

An African who could be induced to speak about it would assure you that a supply of grain which would suffice perhaps for nine months would last the year if mixed with divisi. and also that you needed only to eat a little to feel full.

Clearly the African expected and was accustomed to food shortage since it was only through magical protection that he could hope to meet and survive the vicissitudes of the year.

Some people have a type of medicine that is called divisi. With that medicine, if someone farms a very small area, a single acre, that acre can give him two, four, or even five tons of maize. Yet you farm five acres, and fail to harvest even one ton. So, what is happening is that he is coming into your fields, and taking your seeds, and causing them to move into his field. That is what people do; that is divisi. (T. Chigamba)

USAVI
Sadza is, above all, the African's food. No meal is complete or satisfying without it. But just as essential is a relish of some kind, called usavi, and in these is to be found the highest art of the housewife. Many and varied are the recipes for usavi, they disprove emphatically that the diet of the tribesmen is monotonous and dull.

In fact the wide fault that tribesmen found with their food when at work was its monotony. Some tribes, as for instance the Shangaan of Ndanga, were acknowledged by their neighbors for their skill in utilising their environment for the preparation of usavi.

The importance of usavi cannot be overestimated and it is stressed because of the popular view that all an African requires is sadza.

If our grain bins were full and we had no usavi we would be hungry

they say, and an observer has only to note the attention and effort given to the collection of material for usavi to appreciate its importance.

There is the hurried collection of pig weed while weeding a farmer's lands, which the boss may forbid as interfering with his work. There is the strenuous labour of cutting down trees to capture a locust swarm before the early sun warms their wings, an organised effort so strong as to denude hillsides of their trees.

So essential is usavi that in a bad year Africans are to be found gathering roots and herbs which are highly unpalatable, bitter, and full of tannin.

An instructive sidelight on Karanga ideas about feeding is provided by their language terms. A good meal is one in which sadza and usavi just balance. Usually they eat till the usavi is finished.

The sadza that remains over is called nzuwa, and to eat this "sadza without relish" is not kudya (to eat), but kutemura. This nzuwa may be kept over during the day and is then called muswedzwa. If kept over to the following day it is called muradzwa. It is for muswedzwa that visitors ask if they arrive at a kraal.

Sadza without usavi is hardly recognised as food and a proper proportion between the two is essential if one is to be well fed or, indeed, if he is to consider he has been fed at all.

Increased bags to the acre may in fact be useless from a nutritional point of view if there is a shrinkage in the vegetable, animal and insect matter that goes towards usavi.

Finally it must be noted that a meal is comprised of sadza and usavi only. There are no separate dishes or additional courses such as form part of European arrangements. People actually dislike the idea.

We would vomit if we took a bit of potato, a bit of cabbage, a bit of meat, like you do

There is a hint of scorn in the idea of nibbling at various little dishes. African children are always nibbling and scrounging for food, but when they reach the age of about eight they will be lectured and scolded for such behavior. A grownup does not eat between meals, it is childish.

It is in the usavi dishes that the dietician must search for the source of all those food values which sadza does not provide. In general the mice hunts, the game net, the fish trap, the search for herbs and wild fruit, the ant trap and the pumpkin patch, each working in an intricate context of traditional experience, have but one end; the augmentation and variation of the usavi dish.

This will make it clear that bachelors at work are liable to feed themselves inadequately unless usavi is issued to them and why they should be so full of complaints. The appetising quality and variety of their food depends on the art of usavi cooking and without a wife to ensure this their enjoyment of food and their diet suffers. The copper mines found that

for every married man admitted to hospital there were two bachelors admitted, and cooking the food for bachelors brought about very good results ... and an improvement in general physique because bachelors neglected to cook the food properly

The distribution and apportionment of food is governed by complex rules of etiquette which define the behavior of different age grades, young and old, seniority, of the sexes, of different relatives, of strangers.

Everyone knows his place. How very rare is there any trouble over the sharing of food, even when starvation is abroad and appetites might be expected to overrule manners!

Men and women never sit together, or only on special occasions such as in marriage rites. Nor do those between whom there is any ill feeling: "there was trouble between them and they were eating apart." The meal is essentially a communion and is ceremonially used as such when reconciliation or new social bonds are to be proclaimed.

Young men await their elders and a youth would not start until told to do so by his father. A boy may only dip his lump of sadza (musuwa) into the gravy (muto) and not remove any lumps of meat that may be in the usavi. His father must do that for him.

Different relatives have all kinds of special privileges over food: a wife must keep certain delicacies, such as a special rodent (mbeva), for her husband and not eat it herself.

Their insistence on the sharing of food is a remarkable element in their culture. From the earliest years a child is taught to share his food, that he must never eat alone, and, at the same time, learns to share in the food of others as a matter of course. To share in food is no occasion for gratitude for thanks, it is the natural thing to do.

It is not hospitality in the European sense of the word, it is just the natural and proper thing to do. Labourers will deny themselves food to allow visitors a share. One trader remarked:

Parents visiting the store have to buy their children packets of biscuits to keep them quiet, and I often wish that white children were here to see the unselfish way they are handed round

To eat by oneself is very bad manners, and, when necessity demands it, a man will always turn his back on those present while eating by himself. This sharing habit is intimately associated with their whole mode of life, but it is already being undermined by the cycling mobility of modern times.

In the face of it, all such virtues as thrift, good husbandry, preparation for a rainy day, all those mental attitudes which mean a restriction on food sharing, are in direct opposition to their whole system of life; in fact, European virtues would be vices if transplanted without modifying the culture to receive them.

It has been wisely asked wether the Africans will continue to be so generous when they can conceal their food supplies as effectively as the whites do. The privacy of the pantry is a very different influence from the publicity of kraal housekeeping.

THE GOOD MEAL
The African idea of the "good meal" or a "square meal" is a very important factor. The sign of the end of a good meal is a full stomach. They will indicate a distended stomach and their talk becomes animated at the thought of it:

If our stomach does not fill up we are still hungry.

Unless there is this sensation at the end of a meal, he will not feel he has eaten sufficiently, and to this end stodgy, heavy, sadza is the finest food. Weight of food is most important.

One might say that the absence of stomach strain connotes hunger and when we consider actual foods we shall see that "foods which keep in the stomach" are favored for long journeys or special hard work.

A further background to this idea of how good a square meal is must be noted, indeed it is a background to the whole attitude to food. In white culture food is a regular routine affair that never varies, so clock-like in its arrangements that it is taken for granted.

To the tribesman, food has no such pleasant guarantee. His experience of it ranges from months of starvation, when every mouthful counts and every seed is swept up, to periods of profusion, to that happy times of zhizha when "there is so much food you can refuse it" (February to March).

The emotional values behind his food are high and varied, rising as they do out of such fluctuating experiences. The intensity of this attitude to food is often reflected in the assault and culpable homicide cases which come before the courts.

That a wife did not have food ready for her husband is regarded as a legitimate reason for beating her, and often a husband goes too far especially after beer and lands himself in crime.

Food, therefore, is intimately associated with most of his pleasures and sorrows, of his joys and tribulations in a manner whites are unconscious of in their culture, which has rendered food consumption so independent of the anxieties of life.

This view, combining with his idea of "the good meal," explains why the tribesmen will always eat all he can in one go; eat a big buck in one evening and never dream of spreading it out over several days, even with famine about him. Food is much too important inside the stomach to trifle with outside.

FOOD TASTES AND DIET IDEAS
These vary from tribe to tribe and even by localities. Even close proximity of tribes with different principal crops, different relishes and modes of cooking has not meant much diffusion from one to the other, but rather attitudes of scorn, contempt and repulsion.

Even so universal a dish as sadza is made according to taste in consistency, heaviness and fineness of grain. Badly cooked sadza is called mbodza.

Upfu hwaka mwazhika is gritty meal and is very much disliked. People will prefer to buy native ground meal, and they will walk great distances to a miller whose mill is famed for its fine milling.

A trader whose mill is wider than 24 mesh will attract very few customers, though it is interesting to find that such a mill sometimes does quite well because customers think they are getting more meal, since such a coarse meal does not pack so closely in their basket.

At the same time such a miller finds a ready sale for sieves, as his customers will sieve the meal and use the coarse portion for beer.

While the average trader's mill is a 24 mesh the tribesmen is increasingly tending to buy from the big milling companies where he can get the fine No. 1 or 30/32 mesh meal and even the refined Pearl meal.

He does this, not to copy the whites, but because these refined meals are the closest approach to the old original fineness of grain which a pair of stones (guyo and huyo) once ground out in the kraal.

This insistence on fineness of grain has most serious consequences, for it means that the staple food of the population is being deprived of its dietetic values.

There are two kinds of sadza. The proper sadza which is carefully prepared by first adding a cupful of thin paste called mususu (a handful of meal mixed in cold water) to the pot of boiling water. When this mixture bubbles it is said to kukwata, and it is then, if the men be near, that the woman puts the twirling stick with prongs (musika) into the pot and, turning to the men, asks, "May I stir my pot?"

The answer to this little ceremony of politeness is, "Please stir, Mother," and she slowly proceeds to add meal by the handful, rotating the musika all the time until the sadza is too thick and she has to use a stirring stick (mugoti).

Meal is added until she judges the sadza is just right; it must not be too thick or too watery. Care is taken by a woman to serve this to her husband in a becoming way. Nicely rounded, shiny lumps are made with a wooden spoon (gwaku) and piled on top of each other (zvitina) on a plate (ndiro).

The other kind of sadza, usually made by men or when in a hurry, and certainly not a proper dish to be set before a husband by his wife, is known as sadza roku bvurwa.

The meal is added to boiling water without first adding the thin paste. Only a mugoti is used to stir it. This, they say, causes the sadza to be lumpy, the small lumps containing a kernel of uncooked or improperly cooked meal.

This sadza is made when hard work or a long journey is about to be started; it can be felt in the stomach for a long time afterwards; a man then does not feel hungry, can go without food, and has plenty of strength.

When coarse meal is prepared in this hurried way it usually results in the meal merely being scalded, and consequently it continues to swell and expand in the stomach. If the man has filled himself to capacity, this further unforeseen expansion inevitably causes stomach trouble. Hence the "alleged stomach trouble" caused by coarse or husky meal is usually quite genuine.

One pound of dry mealie meal becomes two pounds of sadza roku bvurwa. Of men who had eaten the previous day, one pound of sadza roku bvurwa were eaten, while of proper sadza one ate three pounds at a sitting.

This is significant, for tribesmen admit that they are unable to eat as much of sadza roku bvurwa as of the proper sadza, and tests show that more than twice the quantity of the latter as compared with the former can be eaten. It must be remembered that these were meals without usavi.

This means that labourers who habitually eat sadza roku bvurwa are not consuming the same amount of food as those with wives. Men dislike cooking, specially after working all day, so they will skimp the business of preparing proper sadza, and the acquisition of a temporary wife is a useful way out.

Maize meal sadza is said not to be so satisfying as millet meal. The latter gives more strength. So the shift from millet to maize has meant a deterioration in their food, for those people who hold that view. Many still keep to millet sadza, and when a Shangaan woman said that sorghum meal was better than millet her Karanga husband indignantly argued against her.

EGGS
This dietetically valuable food is not eaten amongst most tribes. One source in Darwin admitted that he was tabooed eggs, but generally the answer is

Eggs do not like to stay in the stomach; we would vomit.

Only persons possessed by a shave spirit, the shavi re murungu, will eat eggs; the spirit calls for them and eats them raw. That a spirit should call for eggs is a sign that the eating of eggs is abnormal. Some will say that eggs cause impotency and that women avoid eggs for fear of childlessness.

VEGETABLES
Tribesmen have a definite prejudice against eating raw vegetables, and even during the rainy season of green vegetables they tend to be held over and dried. So lettuce is ignored. Cooked vegetables (muriwo) are eaten with discrimination.

The mines found that carrots, turnips and leeks had to be put in a previously prepared stew before their labourers could be made to eat them; others had to go further and chop up vegetables very finely in a stew to prevent their removal.

Enquiries indicate that pumpkins, spinach, pumpkin leaves, brinjal, marrow, kale and turnip tops require no persuasion, but that cabbage sometimes requires a little time "to put over."

Tomatoes, though they prefer to sell them to whites, are appreciated. Potatoes, beans and monkey nuts are, of course, well known native foods. Beans must be free of weevil or borer, for people believe that such infected beans cause diseases of the stomach.

Mention might be made here, as an instance of ingenuity in the acquisition of food, of the lower Lundi Shangaan who live in a starvation area.

The potato tops of the normal crop are cut and planted out as "cuttings" in the sandy bed of the river. There they remain, throwing down roots to the water below, and by October these have swelled out to form finger like potatoes that provide those extra mouthfuls which are so necessary in that time of the year. The sight of potato tops growing on the white river sand is a surprising one till the secret is revealed.

The tribesmen have an expression, "muriwo uno gura mabvi," meaning "vegetables cut the knees." A man will use this after having eaten a lot of vegetable usavi because nothing else was available. It is a laziness from the knees; he just wants to do nothing and has no energy. The vegetable is not an energy producing food, in their opinion.

There is a very large number of different vegetable growths, and fruits and nuts, which are collected from the veld. Some varieties are very attractive dishes, but the collection of others is a sure sign of a bad year, of a time when the tribesman is hard pressed to find anything for the usavi dish.

It is not as a food, not because of any recognition of the food value of vegetable matter, that they collect and eat it; but simply as an ingredient of usavi.

So too many vegetables upset the balance between sadza and usavi; the usavi dish is too small to take too large a quantity of vegetables. If there are plenty of rats or similar meat delicacies obtainable, it will be the vegetable ration that is ignored.

Generally, a tribesman will account for an aversion by saying it makes him vomit, in much the same way as a European would say he feels ill at the idea of eating locusts or snake, but there are deeper taboos and beliefs which are difficult to reach and are often found only by accident. Much too easily does the tribesman offer an explanation that is only camouflage. We hear that

green vegetables are often looked on as women's food and likely to make a man sterile, also onions and leeks.

A dish that might be mentioned here is called mutakura, and is recognised as the most strengthening and lasting food the tribesmen have. It is a mixture of beans and whole mealies boiled together. Any very hard work, any anticipated delay till the next time food is obtainable, a long journey, are all occasions best prepared for on mutakura.

MEAT
The tribesman will do anything for meat, and draws on unheard of springs of energy when meat is the inducement. As a general rule, it might be said that meat, under old cultural usages, was only available on ceremonial or ritual occasions; a sacrifice to the spirits, the sacrifice of a beast at burial or inheritance ceremonies, the ceremonial feasts at marriage, the fine of a beast paid to a chief, the ceremonial reconciliation of opponents.

Because of the custom of slaughtering for a feast, the largest number of kinsfolk would share in it so that at no time would a large quantity per person be available; but again there were certain feasts restricted to very special relations.

This is also complicated by the rules of apportionment, there being well recognised parts of a beast which are reserved for special people, the chief's portion, the spirits' portion, the deceased's sister's portion, and so on for various relatives according to social status.

To this exploitation of domestic resources must be added the more uncertain meat supply of the veld. That this was a most important activity is certain. Tribal hunts took place on a grand scale. There were and are hunting spirits, magical guarantees of success, the forecasts of the "bones," many traps, and a large body of traditional lore and skill in the acquisition of game, birds, rats and fish.

Generally we can say that meat was a sufficient rarity to make any occasion a most significant one, and to this must be added ceremonial and ritual values. The feelings and emotions behind meat are deep ones. Its consumption marked an occasion of special joy or special gravity, so it attains to and provokes a cluster of emotions far beyond its significance as an item of food.

Anyone who has stayed to watch the scene round a big kill, particularly an elephant, will never forget the complete enthusiasm and frenzy, when knife and axe cuts on legs and hands pass unnoticed, and the tribesman literally throws himself into the meat.

Here is the highest pitch of excitement, the unexpected gift of enormous quantities of meat; but all the way down the scale to a ration of one pound per week these culturally formed attitudes towards meat are present and are ready to find expression in terms of the quantity and the significance of the occasion. Such "kills" remain red letter days in the history of the tribe, never ceasing to provoke animated memories. Such is the meaning of meat.

Within this general attitude to meat one may come across many specific taboos characteristic of various tribes. There is the well known one of people as the WaRemba which forbids them to touch meat they have not themselves killed by cutting the throat; there are people, mainly differentiated by totems, who may not eat sheep, goats, pigs, different species of buck, various portions such as the heart, the marrow, the brains, and the legs of the animals.

Not only do traditional taboos operate, but new ones sweep into power such as the prohibition against pigs among the Zionists and the "Apostles" (mapostori) who will refer you to the Bible and the evil spirits which entered into swine.

Of course, in the reserves the "Cattle Complex," which is a real psychological complex buttressed by religious, social, ceremonial and social status motives, is an enormous barrier between the tribesman and an ample source of meat.

It is a fine example of how culture can restrict a people's food supply; the urge of hunger, even in a famine area, is not strong enough to overrule the cultural attitudes towards cattle and the place they hold in hearts and minds and daily life.

MISCELLANEOUS
Locusts, flying ants, ants and caterpillars are regarded as great delicacies, worthy of hard work and great patience. Their food value is higher, caterpillars particularly having a higher protein content than meat.

A tribesman is always on the alert for honey; he has his hives and his magical medicines to protect them. In stores he will buy sugar and eat it as we do sweets.

A shortage of salt expresses itself in a deep craving and varies considerably in different parts of the country. In the Zambezi Valley salt will carry a traveler anywhere and assist him from any difficulty.

Not a grain will be ignored if it falls on the ground, and a handful of it will be eaten ravenously. Salt pans are a source of tribute and of prestige to the controlling tribe. Certain plants are burned and the ashes provide a salt.

Fruits such as oranges are such a completely new taste that it is difficult to generalise, but such incidents as that of the farmer who found that orange extract had to be administered compulsorily by the spoonful and later had to guard the bottle to prevent it being drunk straight off, and another who suddenly found his orchard, which had stood unmolested for years, requiring protection since he started to educate his labour up to vitamin C, are indicative of how quickly this taste can be acquired.

A tribesman suffering from bad gums and teeth was startled by the simple prescription of "eat an orange a day for a week," and later astonished by the sudden cure. News such as this spreads widely. Orange and lemon juices are also believed to have aphrodisiac properties.

CONCLUSION
The most important foods that the tribesman not only lacks but culturally avoids are milk, eggs and green vegetables. His basic food is being deprived of its nutritive content as the purchase of refined meal spreads.

We see then, that if "man is first of all a nutritive process," that the tribesman's selection of the substances that are available is a dietetically unsound and eroding influence on his physical and mental makeup.

His traditional or "natural" food is not the fine thing so many hold it to be, and in the new environment in which he is expected to work it is so out of place as to cause serious malnutrition and disease.