The Dried Fish,
Very Properly Known As Stink-Fish, Is Much Preferred; This Is Either
Eaten As It Is, Or Put Into Stews As Seasoning, As Also Are The
Snails.
The meat is eaten either fresh or smoked, boiled or baked.
By baked I always mean just buried in the ground and a fire lighted
on top, or wrapped in leaves and buried in hot embers.
The smoked meat is badly prepared, just hung up in the smoke of the
fires, which hardens it, blackening the outside quickly; but when
the lumps are taken out of the smoke, in a short time cracks occur
in them, and the interior part proceeds to go bad, and needless to
say maggoty. If it is kept in the smoke, as it often is to keep it
out of the way of dogs and driver ants, it acquires the toothsome
taste and texture of a piece of old tarpaulin.
Now I will ask the surviving reader who has waded through this
dissertation on cookery if something should not be done to improve
the degraded condition of the Bantu cooking culture? Not for his
physical delectation only, but because his present methods are bad
for his morals, and drive the man to drink, let alone assisting in
riveting him in the practice of polygamy, which the missionary party
say is an exceedingly bad practice for him to follow. The inter-
relationship of these two subjects may not seem on the face of it
very clear, but inter-relationships of customs very rarely are; I
well remember M. Jacot coming home one day at Kangwe from an
evangelising visit to some adjacent Fan towns, and saying he had had
given to him that afternoon a new reason for polygamy, which was
that it enabled a man to get enough to eat.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 197 of 705
Words from 54517 to 54821
of 194943
