The Funeral Feast

The cows stomach looked very familiar. I had actually never seen the stomach of a cow before, so I definitely recognized this one. The last time I had seen it a young man from the village was emptying it of chewed cud. Not rinsing it. Not washing it. Using his fingers to pick out 80 percent of the cud. The entire thing folded up on itself like a rubbery blanket, creamy in colour, with a vague green tinge that was the cut. And the surface isn't smooth. It is covered by rubbery little protrutions, each about the thickness and size of a match head.
The man next to me cut off a piece as big as his tongue and chewed it happily.
Well, this is what we came for, so I followed suit.
Man, it tasted terrible. It was rubbery, and grizzly and tasted just like the cud it had held a few hours earlier. And bitter. Very, terribly, disgsutingly bitter.
And the texture made it even worse. You couldn't crunch it down, or swallow it whole. This needed work, it needed chewing. A lot of chewing. Flavour releasing chewing.
When I finally swallowed it I was asked how it was.
"Terrible" I answered, "bitter and disgusting"
This was sign language everyone understood. Much laughter.
Then, just to save face and keep up my side, I cut off another piece and repeated the whole procedure. This was "pudding", and there were two courses still to come.

After the funeral ceremony had ended, the food was brought in. The women and young men formed a line from the giant black cooking pots, and each plate was passed from hand to hand, until it reached a lap.

You were expected to have your own clasp knife, and there were some spoons to share out when required.

The first plate arrived. I thought it was the only one, so made the mistake of eating it all. I was pretty full. Take a metal plate. Fill half with rice, and half with a samp & mielie mix. Build up a bed about as thick as your thumb. Then ladle on some stewed meat, two or three chunks. Then, take a coffee mug of warm animal fat and pour it over everything. This wasn't too bad if you drained off most of the fat. I had some mutton and beef. Nothing scary. The man next to me had what looked like a thick white piece of rubber on his plate. I asked where this was from and he indicated the back of the neck. I assumed it was a tendon of some sort. Anyway, I tried this and it tasted just like it looked.

This was followed by a steaming cup of tea and a doorstopper of Xhosa bread. Women would arrive out of teh talking, laughing jostling crowd and drop plates on your lap. Dogs were trying their luck and every now and then, through the noise, you would hear a yelp as one took too big a liberty.

Once the tea was finished, a man came around and placed branches of leaves at our feet. About a bunch for a group of four of five men. You all formed a rough circle around this. This was the plate for your next course. Another man came past and piled raw meat onto the leaves. We got some liver, intestines, and strips of steak. The youngster amonst the group then took this off to braai (BBQ).

While he was gone, another man came past and put a large metal plate at our feet with more cuts of meat. This was actaully the best tasting of the lot. It had stewed for far longer and the meat was much more tender. I was so full though I didn't really enjoy it. I was just surviving. making sure I kept up with the rest.

You basically reached down, grabbed a big bit of meat in your hands, and cut pieces off with your clasp knife and put directly into your mouth.

Just as I finished this, and thought I could do no more, the raw meat returned having been braaied. It was very over done. Very. Anyway, amonst lots of back slapping and instructions to "eat" "eat" I set to. The liver was pretty good. The intestine was completly crap. It was white on the outside, and about the size of a pork sausage. Inside was a different story. It had runny, cooked shit in it. Literally. It tasted and smelled pretty bad, I won't lie. But I fought through it to much laughter and smirking.

That is when the stomach arrived.

But there was more to come. The stomach was followed by three of four big bones being dropped onto out plate of leaves. We hacked off what meat was visible and then the bones were cracked open and yellow morrow ladled out with the flat of your knife.

I was so overloaded by this stage. Buut this meat was the most rubbery of all, and each mouthfull had a fine grating of course pieces of bone that you had to spit out afterwards.

I finally said no to the half litre of sour porridge that was the last course.

I burped cows stomache for about two days.