Funny
how we are put into a certain group by the kind of food we eat. In
fact, specific diets represent whole nations. If I say Pizza,
everyone thinks Italian. If I say feta cheese, everyone thinks
Greek. Sauerkraut – Germany, Christmas pudding – England and so
on and so on.
Recently,
I’ve been introduced to the idea of mice on the menu.
I
always ask the kids at school if they did anything interesting over
the weekend and I usually get the same answer “I play soccer” or
“I wash my clothes” or “I go church”. One boy in grade 4,
who is more confident than the rest of the class has surprised me by
putting up his hand to tell me that he shoots birds with his catty
when I popped the question.
A
few Mondays later he caught my attention as he was giggling
excitedly. I moved closer and he pointed to his friend seated next
to him and said, “he eat puku”, meaning “he ate a mouse”.
Luckily, prior to this, my new Zimbabwean friend had told me that
eating mice and huge rats were common back home and that kids would
often catch mice as a pass time which they cooked on a fire. She said
the big rats were a meal for the whole family, some being the size of
small pigs. If you went to bed without washing your hands after
eating, you ran the risk of rats gnawing away at your fingers in your
rural hut.
The
sweet embarrassment of the boy in the class who was put on the spot
had nothing to do with the fact that he had eaten a mouse but rather
that he was now expected to speak English. I licked my lips
exaggeratedly and said “really, did you make a fire to cook it?”
which made everyone giggle and he nodded yes and grinned.
I’ve
recently heard about people eating mice in Zambia. This particular
woman boiled her mice in a pot and ate them whole, as in head, hair,
guts and all. Eeuw. That’s a bit rough for me to want to try.
Marius,
who I mentioned in my previous post, popped around on his way home
the other day. His bush survival stories are enthralling so, wanting
to impress him, I recounted the story of munching on boiled mice. He
listened patiently as I hurried to the part about the hair still
being on, then he slowly tapped his Gouloise on the cigarette box a
few times, and said it reminded him of the time he won a Mercedes
Benz at a festival in Namibia. His was jonk en jukkerig and at a
fair with a girl who he had the hots for. A few beers later, she
fluttered her eyelashes at him, offering him the promise of a good
time if he took part in the competition to win a brand new Merc. The
catch was, contestants had to swallow a mouse and keep it down for
five minutes. The real catch was that the mouse was still alive.
Contestants held their mouse which was dipped in syrup, by their
tails and swallowed it without chewing.
Marius
remembered being more worried about throwing up the beer which he had
just spent good money on but the R20 ticket to take part in the
competition, which was a lot of money in those days, was money well
spent since a young girl waited excitedly on the sideline. Of the 16
contestants, a few were able to successfully swallow the live mouse
smothered in syrup but no-one was able to keep them down for the full
5 minutes except for Marius. He resisted the urge to part with the
contents of his stomach long enough to receive the keys to a brand
new Merc. Only then, green at the gills from the strange sensation
in his stomach, keys safely in hand, did he throw up.
He
got the girl and the car of his dreams which in fact wasn’t the
Merc but the old man’s Voxaul which he had his eye on for some
time. He traded the Merc for the Voxaul, and with the fathers
blessings walked away a very happy man.
