The Sunday Mail
Rosenthal Mutakati
If you want to invite trouble or scorn, you just have to serve a vegetarian dish to a workman after a hard day’s work.
Sometimes it is an unpardonable crime.
Serving visitors with vegetables can be considered unwelcoming.
They will call you all sorts of names and vow never to return.
“Come wind, come rain, I will never visit Kudakwashe’s house because she has no respect. How can someone seriously welcome her father-in-law with vegetables? She is getting too big for her shoes and she must never expect anyone’s support should she get into marital problems,” a certain gentleman said in a kombi during a trip into town.
“Hapana nezvaamai vese paya. Kusevesa baba vemurume veggie?” the other guy queried.
Many people share this view.
Apparently people can only be considered welcoming if they greet visitors with a salty chew.
Anything short of this expectation is said to be akin to attending a birthday party without a cake.
“What’s that? Real people who know how to respect elders do so with meat. It is a sign of poverty to fail to serve your mother-in-law roasted chicken, pork, fish or beef. Ukama igasva hunozadziswa nekudya nyama, kwete zvimiriwo,” a certain woman said during a discussion with this writer.
“After all the sacrifices of sending a child to school right up to university wozoitirwa shura rekupihwa muriwo. Ndinomutsa bongozozo.”
Largely known as “nyama”, “mutsara”, “hutsengwa”, “mitso”, “chekurumirira”, “nhindi”, there is something about meat that makes the lion in most people roar.
If you want to build a strong relationship with someone, it has to be done over platefuls of succulent meat.
And when pursuing a love interest, you must be careful not to offer her vegetarian dishes like soya chunks. Unonyura!
You can easily earn yourself the moniker “Rume remuriwo riye”.
Men worth their salt usually pool resources to slaughter a beast and share the meat.
In rural areas, a funeral is considered princely and befitting if a cow is slaughtered.
There are characters that only show up at such gatherings after getting assurances that a beast will certainly be slaughtered.
“Kana mombe isina kutunga muti handionekere. Ndingaita zvekupambadza nguva yangu kuenda kusina nyama,” such elders usually say while shoving red chillies in their pockets.
As I commit pen to paper gentle reader, there are countless women who have been sent packing for serving their husbands meatless meals.
It is not uncommon for community elders to spend most of their time presiding over marital disputes spawned by failure to serve the family patriarch meat.
Though frying sausages and consuming meat daily is considered a sign of affluence or being well-organised (kurongeka), some health experts warn that it is unhealthy.
Sizzling steaks and juicy burgers are staples for some, but research has shown that regularly eating red meat and processed meat can raise the risk of type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke and certain cancers, especially colon cancer.
Prisons are full of people doing time for stock theft due to people’s insatiable appetite for meat.
Unfortunately, nowadays, when the country is receiving copious amounts of rainfall, cattle are succumbing to theileroisis — popularly known as January Disease — and the meat from the carcasses seems to be finding its way to some butcheries.
It is now not unusual to see trucks full of cattle, some of which look sickly, on their way to slaughter, as farmers save themselves the risk of losing them to tick-borne diseases.
While meat is tasty, making a healthy choice saves lives.
Inotambika mughetto.
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