/miːt/
noun:
1. The cooked or uncooked flesh of a four-legged animal. A staple of the Namibian diet.
“I don’t eat meat.” “But you eat chicken and fish?” “Yes.”
Hipster equivalent: avocado
Some days ago I had the opportunity to attend my first wake in Namibia. One of my colleague’s mothers had died, so all of the school staff went to their homestead to pay our respects. I had no idea what was in store, but I had been around long enough to know we wouldn’t be allowed to leave without eating. So I kept my stomach pretty empty in preparation for the impending meat and porridge bomb I knew I would be expected to consume.
After a bumpy hour and a half in my principal’s van we finally arrived at Ondobe village. We parked outside the homestead, and copies of hymns were passed out. We proceeded inside and greeted the elder ladies at the door one-by-one (some of whom got a real kick out of my greeting in the local language). Then we all lined up under a large tent that was setup inside the homestead. We sang three or four hymns to a line of family members seated across from us. The principal said a few words and a prayer in Oshiwambo and went to greet all of the family. The rest of the staff followed suit and we walked down the line of family members, greeting each one and shaking their hands.
Finally, once everyone was seated and the murmuring was settling down, we sang two more hymns. As we finished the last hymn there was a moment of silence and then a massive gust of wind. The wind ripped the overhead tent off of its supports, throwing it twenty or thirty feet into the air. Other personal tents that were setup were taken into the sky and blown off of the homestead entirely.
Luckily the gusts died down as quickly as they had started, and we were able to restore order to the setup pretty quickly. We took that as our cue to move on to the next part of the procession. So my colleagues and I moved into a small room with a table full of food. The walls were lined with chairs so we sat facing each other. Sodas and beers and ciders were distributed to everyone, and plates of meat and porridge were dished up.
Let me digress for a moment to mention that I’ve eaten my fair share of meat and porridge in my time in Namibia, so I was looking forward to this meal. But I was also mildly intimidated at the prospect of eating with all of my colleagues watching because I’ve resolved myself to the fact that I will never be as deft at eating with my hands as they are.
Anyways, I started in on my plate as I usually do; I like to gauge the flavor of the meat by sopping up some meat oil with porridge and eating that first. This meat was good and I was hungry so I grabbed a large, flat piece in my left hand and took a bite, or tried to anyways. The meat was super tough, so I had to chomp down on it and use both of my hands to rip the rest of the piece from my mouth. This wasn’t particularly phasing, I just ended up spending a long time chewing and biting.
After a while (others were still finishing up so I felt like I was doing alright) I got down to one large, last bite of meat. In retrospect I should have considered why this was the last one left, but at the time I figured ‘hey, I’ve never seen a Namibian leave a piece of meat on a plate, I’m not about to do it’ so I popped the entire piece into my mouth. Instantly I realized my terrible mistake; the meat was un-chewable. But I’d also never seen a Namibian spit a piece of meat back onto a plate so I just sat there chewing, convinced that eventually it would break down enough to be swallowable.
Minutes later, everyone else was cleaning up their plates and washing their hands and I was still there, hopelessly chewing a huge mouthful of meat. I started to mentally run through my options: I could spit it out and risk being super rude, I could try to swallow it and risk choking, or I could continue to covertly chew it and pretend that I was done until I had an opportunity to spit it out more privately. Regretfully, I went with option three.
I washed up my plate and hands and sat back down. I took a couple paranoid swigs of coke to divert any suspicions that my colleagues might have had about me storing a massive half-chewed piece of meat in my mouth for upwards of ten minutes. After I had finished my coke, and there was truly no end in sight for this piece of meat, I had to take action.
I figured that if I could get the meat into my hand without anyone noticing, I could hide it until we left, and drop it somewhere in the sand on the way out. I spent a couple minutes waiting for the perfect time when I was convinced nobody was watching, and quickly spit the meat into my right hand. Thank God that’s over; holy crap how was this all in my mouth, it barely fits in my hand; and, I hope we leave soon because this is absolutely terrible.
After some minutes of clutching the meat in my fist, people started getting up and getting ready to leave. But, to my shock and absolute horror, everyone was lining up to shake hands again. And I was already shaking a large portion of probably goat stomach. The only option was to throw the meat out of one of the open windows. I thought I might be able to get away with it in the midst of the moderate chaos of people queueing up for the hand-shaking. So I got up and attempted to very casually lean onto the edge of a window. I slowly draped my arm outside the edge and dropped that damn piece of meat down into the sand. Freedom! I washed my hands again and proceeded as if I hadn’t been freaking out over a half-chewed piece of meat for the past fifteen minutes.
I went to another wake a couple days later and picked through my meat very carefully. As bad as this experience was, it’s not particularly special anymore. This kind of thing happens all the time with varying degrees of potential embarrassment. For me, one of the most difficult parts of being immersed in a completely different culture is knowing the line between an acceptable level of cultural ineptitude and outright rudeness. Of course this line changes depending on who I’m interacting with, and the context of the interaction. So, more often than not, I err on the side of caution and end up sitting around with a piece of half-chewed meat in my mouth.
What is the What What 