DISCOVERING “BEEF JERKY” SOUTH AFRICA STYLE IN JOHANNESBURG 1998

Our first days or weeks in Johannesburg brought us many new adventures and experiences. Once again we were in a culture that we did not know. Many of the things that we thought we knew, did not apply, so much, in this magnificent country. We had a lot to learn. It presented us with many memories, stories and adventures. Too many to possibly dedicate an individual Post to. However, this one story sticks out and must be told. So I am going to let my mind drift (it’s getting easier now as the years go on, it seems I’m drifting often now). And in short bites I will try to set out, my first taste of delicacies South Africa style. It might provide an insight into our early days getting settled in and starting to discover our new life.

One of our first eating adventures, while still in the hotel, and after the Great Buffet eat down by the girl’s, had occurred on a Saturday shopping trip to the local food chain. It was not far from our rooms. An ever adventurous, Deysi, wanted to have a snoop around and see what she could find for her new house. It might have been a “Spar” store but I’m not quite sure. In any event it had a great variety of foods. In addition to household goods, knick knacks and almost anything you could find at home. The selection was great and the produce was set out and displayed, in all of its glorious colors and smells. Deysi thought she had stumbled into a small part of heaven.

So while the girls shopped, I snooped around for exotic foods and delicacies, new and tempting, to further my new commitment too try one of everything I could find. Well, soon after starting my quest, I found, hanging from the ceiling, some large strips of beef jerky. Or as it was called in South Africa “biltong”. Each piece was about 3 feet long. It had a sign, “wild game biltong”. Yessss, this is me! I gotta try some of this. While I wandered thru the store, my eyes kept coming back to the “biltong’. Nothing was gonna do except that I get some. I tell Deysi, “I gotta get me some of that meat”! She looks at me with her new, “are you mad” look. But, just sighs, and watches while I buy a couple of big strips of meat.

So loaded with my snack we get back in the car and head back to the hotel. I’m ripping off pieces and offering around. But the girls are all shrunk into one corner of the back seat, as far away from my snack as they could get. Each of them making their best “gagging” sounds. I start chewing away and soon Deysi says “I don’t know what kind of wild game you got, but it smells real bad!” “Open the window before we throw up”. I’m thoroughly enjoying my meat and trying to get them to try some. We drove back to the hotel. Me with my head out the window eating, what could have been zebra, giraffe or gazelle or some other exotic animals that my mind had conjured up.

Back at the hotel Deysi won’t let me bring my snack in with me so I have to finish it outside in the parking lot. All is well and I’m stuffed with about 2 kilos of mashed up biltong. It is now starting to cause a rumbling deep in my bowels. I make it thru the day, but am not really hungry for anything else. A few glasses of coke and the biltong starts to swell up, taking with it any room I might have had for dinner. Fast forward now to about 2 o’clock in the morning and I am now fully awake and starting to have wild and vivid visions of meat, game, flowers and a spinning kaleidoscope of color passing in front of my eyes. I am in a major hallucination. My stomach sounds like the ocean breaking over the rocks.

I lower myself to the floor and sniper crawl my way into the bathroom. As I pass Deysi’s bed I hear her snickering quietly( like hehehehehe) . I’m thinking “doesn’t she know I’m dying?” I make it to the john and raise my head into the bowl. I start to return my biltong to the wild, along with everything else I can remember eating for the past few weeks. The hallucinations are now bad. I have a vision of throwing up my stomach and pushing it back in with the toilet plunger that was resting next to me. The top of my head has gone soft. I am near death! I can’t get up, I can’t move and I feel bad. Now, I am cursing the “biltong” and praying to make it thru this one. Promising, if I do, I will never eat wild game biltong again.

After what seems like hours, I get my head out of the bowl and flop back down to the cool tiles. A few hours later (or what seemed like) I summon up all of my strength and sniper crawl back towards my bed. Now the snickers are a full blown, choked back laugh, I add Deysi into my opinion of wild game biltong. A couple of hours later I make it to my bed but don’t have the strength to lift myself in. So I just fainted at the side of my bed. There she left me. Next morning I wake up, am feeling fine and thinking, I wonder if there were any leftovers, in the car, for brekkie. There were no pictures to accompany this story I just hope I am descriptive enough so that you don’t need any. I might add that it took me a few weeks before I could look at “biltong” again.