The Sunday News
Pathisa, Nyathi
Last week we introduced two terms relating to food but did not define them. The two terms were gastronomy and culinary arts. According to Wikipedia, culinary is related to cooking. It is the art of preparation, cooking and presentation of food usually in the form of meals. The people in the field are referred to as “chefs” or “cooks.”
This is the tragedy of using one language to define concepts from a totally different cultural context. Within the English context the concepts being referred to above are not necessarily brought out as they would apply within a Ndebele language conceptual framework. Concepts and their meanings are culturally contextual. This is precisely the thrust of these articles on food: to bring to the fore the cultural expressions inherent in food in its various manifestations.
Be that as it may, in iSiNdebele there is a term, “abapheki” which refers to those who prepare food. There is even a proverb that says,”abapheki abanengi bayabona ububende.” Many cooks spoil the broth; it is expressed in the English cultural context.
Ububende is a special dish for the Ndebele which is prepared from blood. Its preparation requires particular care and attention. There must be low heat, preferably just the red embers only if it is not to get burnt. One cook who will give all his attention is better than many who may get engaged in animated discussions only to get to realise too late when the food is burnt.
Later, in subsequent articles we are going to see how cattle provided many dishes among the Ndebele. That preference will go a long way to explain the various social and cultural practices attending to cattle. We are going to see many food taboos that embrace chickens and eggs in particular. Totemism was an important spiritual consideration which was applied without bothering to explain too many things. Eggs are the “young of birds.” People with bird totems by and large did not eat eggs, particularly their children. A false myth has been peddled to the effect that the Nguni did not have totems. They had them and we are going to deal with the subject later.
The second term is gastronomy. Once again, we resort to the Wikipedia where gastronomy is referred to as the study of the relationship between food and culture, art of preparing and serving rich, or delicate and appetising food, a style of cooking of particular regions and the science of good eating. A gastronome is one who is well versed in gastronomy.
This definition is close to our thrust which seeks to explore the culture resident in and expressed through food. To fully understand a people being studied it is important to do so from several angles: their arts, food, history, their decorative motifs, their architecture, their folktales, epic songs and praises and cultural heritage, inter alia.
Today we shall begin by asking the question, “Who prepared food among the Ndebele in the olden days?” In the main, food preparation and serving fell within the realm of women and girls. Of course, there were exceptions to the rule when it came to the king whose food was prepared by men and boys. What is important though is the attendant explanation for this. Quite often we do not pose the question, why? As a result, we fail to appreciate the cosmological underpinnings, and yet these provide essential meaning and legitimation for the cultural beliefs being expressed.
For now, let us deal with women as food gatherers, food processors and preparation and finally servers of same. Differences in cultures begin to emerge even at this level. While in many societies food is associated with women, for Africans in general, the explanation is in harmony with their worldview. It will be prudent to begin by looking at gender and its association with certain materials. Clay is one such material that is associated with women. Ibumba, the noun for clay, is derived from the verb “bumba”, to create or procreate. Clay, ibumba, is a particular type of soil and constitutes the upper later of the earth.
When earth is regarded as Mother Earth this, in essence, is a reference to the soil. The earth is perceived as being female and there are many instances in African cultural practices where this notion is brought out. When a married couple engages in the process of making a baby we say, “Babumba umntwana.” We use the same term when women mold clay pots. The parallel between the two processes becomes pretty obvious. In both instances the processes are carried out in privacy or secrecy. Their comparative relationship results in attendant taboos.
When a woman is menstruating she was not allowed to bumba clay pots; nor did she generally engage in any stage of the process. The question is why? Menstrual flow is dead blood. In terms of procreation it is not a desired process. Death inherent in menstruation is passed on to the creation or moulding of clay pots. The condition of death in a menstruating woman is thought to pass on to the pot whose death translates to cracking. Therefore, in order to avoid manufacturing calamities women abstained from clay moulding as long as they were menstruating.
However, more important is the consideration that Mother Earth provided for the sustenance of her children, in the form of both flora and fauna. Humans are nourished by Mother Earth, a woman. Human mothers nourish babies and this they are able to do because they were nourished by Mother Earth. There is thus a hierarchy of mothers, both of them engaged in food provision, the basis of the concept of continuity that Africans were particularly concerned with.
For the Africans imbued with such a worldview, it was only logical that women became the gatherers of food and also the ones involved in its preparation. A further check will reveal that the women were involved in agriculture. Agriculture ought to be understood as a cultural process resorted to in order to extract sustenance from Mother Earth. It is thus at the root of sustaining humankind. The one successful natural process generally known to Africans was sexual reproduction. Once again, we see a link between fertility and the process of agriculture. Agriculture had to succeed if humanity were to survive.
Successful agriculture was thus sometimes facilitated and linked to sexuality when couples engaged in sex prior to planting seed. Remember the sexual act was perceived as “planting the seed.” There are recorded instances when a man would say to his wife, while they were planting, “Puna ndikubudze,”(Bend so I tell you) you know what he meant, but more importantly, why he said so and the two duly went on to do what they did right in the crop field.
When the grain has been produced it is stored in clay bins tucked away in caves. Alternatively, the grain was stored in granaries also made from clay. The granaries, whether at home or concealed in safe caves were administered by women.
Granaries were thatched with grass, another material within the realm of womenfolk. We are of course here referring to Kalanga culture. Food is by all accounts associated with women. They feed the babies in their wombs through the placenta.
They continue to do so after the babies are born by suckling them till they wean them but continue to fend for them: growing food crops, storing the grain, preparing meals from grain and cooking for their children.
