A Bullet In My Meat..

Tumie Modise | Monday August 18, 2014 14:52

Once again, it crossed my mind today as I sit ponderting over my take away lunch. Only this is not fast food from an up market restaurant or any known fast-food outlet; today I bought my food from the street. On any ordinary day, I bring my packed lunch from home. In fact, almost all my colleagues do that on a daily basis, without fail.

Lunch time is always a spectacle and a mad rush as everyone makes a bee line for the only microwave at work.  But of course there will always be the few who don’t pack their lunces from home: the ones who will frown in the mornings at packed lunches but by noon there is a different tune- ‘tla ke utlwe stoki hoo’.(let  me try a small piece).

I have nothing against budding entrepreneurs who sell food on the streets. The ones who, from Monday to Friday, wake up daily, cook copious amounts of meals then sell them on the street. In Gaborone they are known as ‘bo mmaMochachos’. These entrepreneurs’ only weapon against other well known and established eateries is that they follow potential clients and position themselves outside workplaces, and for the average person, nothing beats not having to deal with the daily hustle of lunch traffic and packed malls for a plate of lunch.

So today, after I decided not to bring my packed lunch (I was lazy), I decided to try them.

The one thing that really tempted me was the grilled meat. You have to have no sense of smell to ignore that aroma. I succumbed and I joined the long queue. With my stomach now groaning, soon it became apparent that the queue was not moving at all.

If there is something I do not have patience for, it’s waiting for a plate of food, especially one I  have to pay for.

Stretching my neck a bit, I soon discovered the source of the delay. Somewhere up the queue, a customer had held up the queue and was involved in an exchange with one of the two ladies whom I later gathered was the owner of the food stall. Between their now heated exchanges, the lady was also furiously paging through a thick notebook, not paying attention to the queue at all!

I never even knew, never guessed. I have always wondered about these faithful patriots who, from Monday to Friday buy food without fail from the streets. I have always respected these people, respected how really sensible they seem to be, wondered how unlike the rest of us, they are able to stretch their budgets like that every single day of the month! But never in my wildest dreams have I ever imagined that there existed some flexible ‘payment terms’ at these mobile and convenient food eateries. They have been very smart, that I will give to them.

It only becomes a problem when failure to honour monthly payments plays out in the full glare of other customers and worse, holds up the food queue!

I could join in this elite club of diners, only there is one problem. My only problem with street delicacies is that for every single time I have tried this food, I always end up regretting it.

There are so many theories surrounding the food sold on the streets, and they do not help at all.

The one thing that sets the street chefs apart from other eateries is their very generous meat potions. A steak that usually sells for about P30 at the local butchery is what you get from them at P15 per plate of food.

Then there is the issue of food hygiene. Almost all of us have at one point discovered strange things in food. I have been there- in fact, I have had more than my fair share, I think.

It has now become a bad habit, before eating, provided I missed the cook’s hands, I have to first put a microscopic eye on and go through the whole plate of food in search of just about anything.

This time around my efforts once more paid off, only this time around I got more than I had bargained for.

I did not discover the occasional hair, piece of thread or nail, this time I discovered a bullet in the meat.

I have witnesses. From now on though, I will stick to my packed lunches and sandwiches. Or maybe I just need special deliverance?