Soweto landscape

A typical Soweto landscape with the Orlando Towers in the background and a couple of minibus taxi's thrown in for good measure, photographed from the Hector Pieterson Memorial.

Smileys - a township delicacy

Most South Africans probably know what a smiley is, but if you ask any international visitor to the country they would probably say something you use in mobile messages and online comments.  The difference between a township smiley and an online one is very different though.  A township smiley is a cooked sheep's head, regarded as a local delicacy.

 

The sheep heads are boiled in salty water, sometimes with a stock cube thrown in.  Once they are cooked they get put in the fire to burn off all hears and excess skin.  The cook would have a couple of irons in the fire and that will be used to burn off the remaining hairs and skin, as the lady is doing in the first photo.  The reason the head is called a smiley is that the lips get burned off, exposing the teeth.  This makes it look like the head is smiling at you.  The head then gets cut in half and its these half heads that passers by then buy for lunch or dinner.  I haven't been brave enough to try it yet.

Lewer in die township

Ek is mal oor lewer, maar nie almal is groot aanhangers daarvan nie.  In die townships is dit wel baie gewild en word verkoop op baie straathoeke waar kos gemaak en direk uit die potte aan verbygangers verkoop word.  Onlangs het ek 'n toer vir 'n groep na New Brighton township in Port Elizabeth gereel en een van die stopplekke was 'n "wegneemete" hoek. 

Hier het een van my kollegas 'n pot lewer en uie voorberei en alhoewel baie van die mense op die toer met opgetrekte wenkbroue daarna gekyk het het hulle gou ingespring en die bak leeggemaak.  Ek het nog gehoop vir 'n laaste happie toe was daar net uie oor. 

Cows feet for Halloween

Today is Halloween and as in the past I don't have a proper Halloween pic to post, specially seeing that its not really something we celebrate here in South Africa.  So I prefer to rather post something weird or just slightly gross.  This year its cows feet seen in New Brighton in Port Elizabeth at a informal corner butcher and take away. 

Fruit vendor

Beautiful and fresh fruit and vegetables.  Every housewife and mother's dream.

I just wonder if they would be willing to buy it from a makeshift structure in the middle of New Brighton in Port Elizabeth and not from a supermarket?  The housewives and mothers from the township do but I'm very curious how many suburban ladies would.

Tsisha Nyama

What do you do when you're taking a foreign journalist around and he wants to have something local for lunch? Well, I phoned a colleague at work and suggested that we take him for liver and stew in the township.  He then suggested that we do something else and take the journalist for a traditional ikasi tsisha njama (township braai or barbeque).  Sisha Njama is a Zulu phrase and literally means "burn the meat" while in Xhosa it is spelled Tsisha Njama.  I am a proud Afrikaner and just like the Xhosas, Zulus and other black groups in South Africa a braai is very much part of my cultural and traditions.  The only problem was that I have never been for a proper township braai which meant that this experience was as new to me as for the journalist.

A township tsisha nyama is normally linked to a butchery and to be able to use the braai facility you have to buy your meat from the butchery.  Lifa and Mafa in Zwide, Port Elizabeth has a butchery on par with anything I've seen in the suburbs and we stocked up on enough lamb chops, chicken and boerewors (sausage) for six... just in case we were very hungry.  The meat is spiced and wrapped in brown paper ready for you to throw onto the coals.  Now if I can just find out what their secret spice is cause damn it tasted good.

 

The next step is to head around the building to the back where the fires burn all day long making coals for hungry patrons to braai on.  Most guys braai their own meat although you can also ask the guys who work there to do it for you in return for a tip.  Coals are scooped into the braai's and all you have to do is put on the meat and start "burning the meat".  I did turn one or two heads who weren't quite used to seeing a white guy there, but that was just momentory amazement.  The fact that the locals where just surprised and didn't make an issue of it shows how far our rainbow nation has come.

Is it just me or can I smell the meat... hear it sizzling... see it turn brown... taste it... even though its only a picture.  My mouth is watering right now.

 

Once the meat is done it gets placed back into the brown paper (and in our case into a chicken box) and it is ready to eat.  There are no plates (you eat it out of the box), no cutlery (you eat with your fingers) and no napkins (you just tear off a piece of the brown paper and wipe your fingers on that).  Nothing fancy, just pure indulgence. 

Township lunch - Beef stew and liver

"Are you joining us for lunch of liver and stew in the township ?"  That was the question one of my colleagues asked me the other day.  Now I can be a bit of a picky eater and there are a couple of things I won't touch.  So I thought about it... for about two seconds... and agreed.  And to be very honest, I haven't been sorry I did.  There we were, a Xhosa, two Afrikaners and a Coloured, four South Africans from vastly different backgrounds, heading into the heart of Zwide.  As we walked in one of the locals said, "Just what I like to see.  The rainbow nation getting together to eat in the township."

Before we left the office we phoned ahead to check if they had everything and heard that they were sold out of roosterkoek already.  Good thing we phoned.  A quick stop in New Brighton meant that we came prepared with our own (with prior permission of cause).  The eatery, and I call it that because its nothing like a restaurant as you would know it, doesn't even have a sign outside and I would have passed right by if I was looking for it on my own.  We made ourselves comfortable and Mr X, being the township expert in the group having grown up there, suggested that we start out with beef stew.

I hate to sound like Oom Oubaas, one of South Africa's most beloved television soapy characters, but I can't help it cause its true.  "We chewed our lips off."  The roosterkoek was used to wipe our plates clean after we had eaten every little morsel.  My mouth's watering again.  That was our starter done and time to order our main meal.

Lamb liver and fried onions - two plates between the four of us - washed down with Coca-Cola.  Yummy, yum yum.  The Damselfly doesn't eat liver, so I very rarely get to eat it at home.  This means I really tucked in and by the end of it I was so stuffed I couldn't look at another piece of food.  Most whites would probably never have the opportunity to try a township meal like this but I would really recommend that they get a black friend to take them for the experience.  Since this I've also had the chance to go for a traditional Shisa nyama (township braai or barbeque), but more about that in another post. 

Walkie Talkies

In yesterday's post on the corner butcher in the township I mentioned chicken heads and feet.  The heads and feet, referred to as walkie talkies, is a township delicacy and can be bought from the ladies selling chickens.  The chickens are sold live or plucked (as in the picture).  Once the chicken have been slaughtered and plucked by the ladies they are sold very much like you would buy them in the shop with the only difference being that they are freshly slaughtered with the innards still in them and not in a little bag. 

The heads and feet are sold separately and not along with the rest of the chicken and when you want to buy them just ask for walkie talkies.

Your friendly corner township butcher

There is always something new and interesting to see around the next corner for somebody from the suburbs when visiting a township.  This is even more so the case when you have a camera in hand and looking for those unusual photos to post.  Although there are many of these around the townships, I have a particular butcher / take-away that I like to pop by (to look, not to buy from) when I'm visiting the Red Location Museum.  Just down the road from the museum a couple of pots are cooking away in anticipation of the lunch time or going home crowd to come by and purchase a meal.  The contents of the pots range from chicken pieces and chicken heads & feet to cow liver and offal.

As you walk around the corner you will find the butcher shop's "display window".  It seems that the meat (or offal, fat, liver, etc) doesn't get sold by weight, but rather by quantity with the meat being wrapped in newspaper for you to take with you.  We asked the lady if we could look inside...

... and this is what we saw.  The butcher hacking away at a cow's head trying to split it open, I imagine to try and get to the brain.  I know that half a sheep head with the brain in it (called smileys) is a township delicacy, so my guess is that its the same with half a cow's head. 

SS Mendi Memorial

 Mendi Memorial in New Brighton

There is a monument in the New Brighton township of Port Elizabeth to those who died on the SS Mendi in the First World War.  Blacks were not allowed to represent South Africa during the war as soldiers and those black people who did volunteer were sent to Europe as Labour Corps to do work like digging trenches.  The SS Mendi sailed from Cape Town transporting 823 members of the 5th Battalion, South African Native Labour Corps to France.  From Cape Town she went via Lagos to Plymouth before crossing the English Channel for Le Havre.  On 21 February 1917 at 5am in thick fog she was struck and cut almost in half by the SS Darro, an empty meat ship that was bound for Argentina.

 Inscription on the Mendi Memorial at New Brighton

616 South Africans (607 of them black troops) plus 30 British crew members died in the disaster.  The men of the South African Labour Corps came from a wide range of social backgrounds and different groups within South Africa, but the majority were from the rural areas of the Pondo Kingdom in the Eastern Cape.  Some men were killed outright in the collision while others were trapped below decks.  Many however gathered on the listing deck of the Mendi, but unfortunately very few of them could swim.

One of the most shocking parts of the incident is that the crew of the Darro made no attempt to rescue survivors and kept on sailing on.

The names of the men who died on the SS Mendi are inscribed on the Wall of Names at Freedom Park in Pretoria 

Oral history records that the men met their fate with great dignity. Their chaplain, Reverend Isaac Dyobha, is reported to have calmed the panicked men by raising his arms aloft and crying out in a loud voice:

"Be quiet and calm, my countrymen. What is happening now is what you came to do...you are going to die, but that is what you came to do. Brothers, we are drilling the death drill. I, a Xhosa, say you are my brothers...Swazis, Pondos, Basotho...so let us die like brothers. We are the sons of Africa. Raise your war-cries, brothers, for though they made us leave our assegais in the kraal, our voices are left with our bodies."

They were stomping the "death drill" as the ship went under.