Some Points About South Africa: Food Edition

** First, a note of explanation to tell everyone who's been asking for new posts: I haven't had much internet for the last two weeks, but am now set up on my own laptop, so more frequent posts will be coming in the future. In fact, I'm a little backlogged right now, so there may even be several very shortly. Enjoy! **

I decided that I need to explain what has been a big part of my experience to this point: food. So here are a few tidbits that might explain a little more about what I've been eating (and drinking).


In one sentence: there is too much juice, meat, cheese, and this beast of a thing called “marmite”.


First, I am pretty sure I’ve drank about 18 gallons of various kinds of juice since I’ve been here. You may think that’s an exaggeration, and it most likely is, but still, being served juice with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and at various points throughout the day has made my life resemble that of a 2nd grader.

Second, meat is the staple food in South Africa. Some societies eat bread, some eat rice, but South Africans are crazy about meat, specifically barbecue or “braai.” Here the saying would go, “have a braai, and the people will come.” The notion of “too much braai” is a foreign concept in these parts, as the fact that one can find braais going on every night demonstrates. Braai is such a cultural institution, that it is literally built INTO the structure of buildings. Most dorms on campus have built-in barbecues all around. And when I say barbecues, I'm not talking about those flimsy ones in parks, but full-on wood burning broilers that you could grill a whole cow on and still have room to throw on a few sausages. So yeah, it's been meat meat meat, usually in sausage form.

Thirdly, the problem with all the cheese isn’t so much the quantities or even the frequency of when it is served, instead I would say that South Africans see cheese as being able to go with anything, at any point in the day, even by itself. A croissant for breakfast? Sprinkle some cheddar on there. Want a sandwich for lunch? How about a baguette with cheddar. That’s it. Nothing else. That’s all we have. Cheddar. Grated or sliced. With anything. All the time. Not only would being vegetarian be completely impossible, but vegans would most likely get run out of town as people hurled sausages and blocks of cheese at them.

Lastly, the bit about marmite goes specifically to Mom, who taught me that it’s good to try new things. What follows is a cautionary tale. So a South African friend one day was raving about how he can eat marmite with anything. He was going on and on about how great it was, that I thought, well hey, why not? So I gave the jar a quick whiff. Being utterly disgusted with the result, I began to have second thoughts. Joe, however, insisted that it is simply heavenly on a piece of toast. So I spread the tar-like substance on some toast, and with great trepidation took a bite. It literally took ALL of my powers of self control not to immediately spew the foul concoction onto my plate.
“What the crap is this stuff, Joe?”
“Oh, it’s made from concentrated vegetable extract.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Don’t worry, they love it in England.”
That’s reassuring.

So in a few words, that has been 5% of my experience so far in South Africa. More will definitely keep coming. Potentially very soon. As in I am now going to start writing my next post.