So there are certain things that we natives have learned from the coming of the civilised. Well, I will not say learned, but rather cultivated to certain systems. This cultivation is particularly rife when it comes to our food. Why do you think people have subjected themselves to the consumption of raw fish eggs and call it caviar?
And then of course there is the manner in which all these are consumed, the deportments, the table manners. Anyway we have been “cultivated” and have caught on to the “how to” of civilised eating.
For instance I explicitly refuse to eat using a fork and knife together because, first of all, I learned the skill later on in life (I must have been sixteen years old) and secondly it’s downright complicated. I mean how do you expect me to enjoy my meal and actually be full when my brain is cracking open thinking about ways to manoeuvre these tools? Hhai, suka!
And then there are the easy-to-adhere-to rules of the game, like not putting your elbows on the table when eating, which is rather questionable seeing as the art of “fork and knife” often requires the elbows on the table (how laborious). Anyway, table manners, as these set of policies have been dubbed, are relative as I have discovered.
The thing is that this civilisation is only applicable when it suits the so-called civilised. I remember my first introduction to the life of those who claim responsibility for civilisation, abelungu, I learnt a table-manner lesson that I actually practise religiously — “never comment on people’s food, be it the portions, colour, smell or anything”. Good lesson indeed, and more so because it bordered on one other great lesson my mother taught me — “always remember that people are not the same, so never say something that will make someone feel uncomfortable about being different”.
Lovely lessons those two I tell you, especially for all those who have commented on my food. But more particularly for work colleagues who insist on engaging on this offensive tendency.
You see this week alone, I have twice been a victim of this food commentary sin. First by a colleague whose ancestors are co-founders of civilisation, a white colleague. It doesn’t matter that I was, at the time, eating a burger with a bun the size of the head of a fully-developed infant. He had no right to call it nasty, IMAGINE! Nasty?! My food! Yho!
First I reminded him that it was un-kosher to put his face and business right into my plate and that it was even worse because he was white. I must say, I was not offended by his action, I was too shocked to be offended, he is white for crying in a bucket, he should know better.
Then there was my colleague who might have not known better, but who sure as hell is civilised enough to establish and label one of my favourite South African hip-hop artists “ghetto” because he raps in tsotsi taal (that requires a whole new blog).
My dear colleague walked in on me and my exotic hotdog. “Eew Thembe, potatoes with mayonnaise on bread?!” exclaimed the tall, slender, lettuce-munching colleague with her face screwed as though she were me on the sight of Bakers Eet-Sum-Mor biscuits (now that is eew). That there was the moment that confirmed a thought I’ve had for many years. “Civilised” people are not so civilised. I mean how dare you even think you have the right to say anything about my hotdog, which is just sitting there ready for me to eat, yeh? Nogal in a kitchen packed with other colleagues? (OK there were two other people.)
I mean my ex-boss gave me a certificate for my enduring love for potato chips but I never, not once heard him squeak anything out about the size of my chip chows, although he should have because those things were huge and they are the reason I turned out like this … (shhhh, we are not talking about weight, we are talking about food).
Unless I misheard or got lost in translation, I explicitly remember being schooled about the ritual impurity of uttering even a word about other people’s food. I think I can take a sporadic “that looks like a healthy snack” or something of that nature.
If I hear another being belonging to the civilised world saying anything about somebody’s food in my presence I will demand there be a revolution — drop all forks and knives and return to the days of dipping the phalanges into food.
I do think that even the most unsophisticated bundu-ites know better than to say something about the colour of the ostrich egg on their neighbour’s wooden plate. What am I saying? You dare ask, I am saying be consistent.
Lihle i really feel you girl, its not only about your chips or your exotic hot dog, it goes beyond that. Have you ever noticed how funny our ‘whitie’ friends look at us when we eat our mogodu, mautwana and other like traditionalfoods. Yet its actually funny how they think Chinese food is the best food that has ever happened to mankind. how absurd!!!
But ke dear, i think that we are at fault ourselves, cos we we never compelled to eat as they do or adopt any of their manners. we voluntarily compromised and decided that their way is more civilised, like we had done with most of the beautifil aspects of our culture.
To summarise, i think we are trying to find someone else to blame wherelse we should be blaming the man in the mirror…………
…and then?
What did you want to say? A protest against Western etiquette? A protest against people commenting, positively or negatively, on food?
Please help me!!
According to the leader of etiquette in Afrikaans,Emsie Schoeman (me being an Afrikaner), it is considered bad manners to not have your elbows on the table. Reason: what are you doing with your hands under the table??!? Go figure…
Points well made and taken!
I’m white and live in California, sadly I’m all too aware of the ignorance and bigotry of some of my fellow whites. In the county I live in a cockfight was busted by the police. Although most of the participants were largely Hispanic from Mexico, comments made were largely written condemning Mexicans. However one woman wrote in and stated that George Washington was a keen cockfighter. I don’t approve of this sport but again I don’t feel in any position to pass judgement on the participants. Why these same white people in the 17th century would also have village games in which it was acceptable to gouge out the opponents eyes or rip off their testicles!
Values change over time and we have to keep this in mind, what and how you eat your food is up to you and there should be no shame in it! For crying out aloud SA is a multicultural and multiracial society with extremely diverse ways of life and the least anyone can do is give respect to others!
Keep writing, I enjoy your articles!
Joe Curran, Santa Barbara, California
Quite funny, and true. From a western perspective, I always sneakily suspected that table manners developed so that knives were not put to more gory uses after getting a comment on one’s food from your neighbour turning every dining room table into the Coloseum, especially amongst sibs. Civilities, especially table manners, therefore greatly aided in keeping infant mortality down, I suspect.
Great piece – civilized – yea it is civilised to gas people to death, yet I prefer an old fashioned spear to the gut but I guess for the squemish that is toooo up close and personal.
Food like wine should be left to the individual palate.
There are some Zulu manners that the civilised could do with learning. I like the idea of when giving someone something one uses 2 hands.
I adore a being that express his/her thoughts and thinking, and you’re damn right civilised people are not civilised….i was doing my shopping in this expensive clothes shop one day and only the so called grandsons & daughter of co-founders of civilisation were there and i had no problem with that since i knew what i wanted…the problem started when i noticed that i’m being escorted since i was the only one of my kind and the other beings were doing their shopping freely.
Lihle I agree with you that a meal should be pleasent and if civilised means you must use both the fork and knife, then I am uncivilised and I am white. I only use the knife if I need to cut something up or to assist in getting it onto the fork. The Americans eat like this and it is one of the few things thatthey do, that I agree with.
The so-called rules of table etiquette are not carved in stone. They evolved as the implements used at table evolved. Although table etiquette is an aspect of ‘western’ life, it exists in all cultures and what is perfectly acceptable in one culture (loud belching, for example) will be considered rude in another. In general, I agree with your example about not commenting on others’ food choices. However, much of what you identify with ‘civilised’ table etiquette is not rigidly observed in every setting. Rudeness is never acceptable but people often tease each other in a good natured way about food choices and preferences. I think it is possible that your white colleagues may be teasing you in the same way that they tease each other and rather than seeing it as insulting to you they probably see it as camaraderie and expect a witty retort from you. You might want to ‘cultivate’ such retorts that have everything to do with being human and nothing to do with being black or white.
I realise that you are writing informally here but you want to consider the following:
“…cultivated to certain systems.” The construction “cultivated to…” is not possible in English. You can’t cultivate “to” anything.
“This cultivation is particularly rife…” Sorry, but ‘rife’ is not applicable in this context. “Rife” carries a mainly pejorative meaning as in ‘The ANCYL is rife with hatred’ or ‘The FFP is rife with hard-core nationalists’.
“This cultivation is particularly apparent” might be better?
So well put!!
I refuse to entertain any being that pulls a face at my tripe delicacy and drool over the concept of eating an oyster/lobster/prawns alive.
And this must be extended to language as well. If you cant hear what I am saying dont expect me to repeat it in English, especially if you claim to be proudly South African.
Your piece is like a charity that is beginning @ home…Let the mental emancipation continue!! Amandla Sistah!!
Interesting article. Your response to your own discomfort and the response thereto – to accuse others of being insensitive, etc – shows the same insensitivity of which you accuse others.
I am a white african and love my tripe, sheep’s head, etc and often eat with my fingers. However, I do realise when my conduct or food is such that it causes discomfort to others, and can thus temper my behaviour in such a manner that I do not offend others, or in those instances where I do offend others, to accept the responsibility for such actions whithout having to blame them for being insensitive.
It is called emotional maturity and empathy.
Interesting! Complaining about white people, yet you eat food not from Africa! Potato, South America. Mayonaisse, France. Maize, South America. Hamburger, USA. Not a single mention of African food. Do you find African food disgusting?
@Hjs: I am sorry to dissapoint you but this blog is not about food, altleast not about African food versus western food. This blog was about the general need for people who are meant to be kosher to comment on other people’s food.
I also need to explain to other people who may be as lost as Hjs is that the racial comparisons I make are a mere frame of reference and I cannot help you if you don’t get it.
@Ma’at: This is not a discomfort issue it actually a manners issue and you would know if you read this properley that I take no offence but just driving a point home (pity you got off this taxi too soon).
It is also not a question of eating something that people don’t know because I don’t think anyone (not eve I) would mind enlightening someone on something they don’t know.
@Siobhan: Prior to posting any blog next time, I will be sure to run it past you. Maybe you can even give me a few ideas on. But before you do, please read the last two lines of my profile, maybe that will help you pull yourself together lest you give birth to quadruplets because of my awful syntex.
PS.
oh, yebo and the racial contrasts; guys please get used to them because there will be many of to be seen in my upcoming posts.
“In a normal society the race question is subsidiary to the class question” C.R James.
When South Africa becomes a normal society you will understand that there will be the upper classes with their own mannerisms and the “uncouth masses” that will assimilate some of those mannerisms. The upper classes will have their own unwritten rules of how their lot behaves and talks that distinguish them from the hoi-polloi, a different culture. Nothing racial about it. If you are to study European history then you will see the class distinctions. In many African countries the kids of the upper class identify themselves not with pretence at being white but with Black American popular culture never mind that in the States it is the expression of the “poor” and down trodden. They adopt the same mannerisms. The majority of the whites who came to these shores long ago were what could be termed the underclass. They came to run away from poverty to make their fortune measured according to standards from whence they came. There were manners that were learnt by the aristocracy to which the “riff raff” and even men of means (no good breeding)could only aspire to. In their everyday lives of eating in narrow kitchens or scullions, recreating in rough bars drinking not fancy saloons we can safely say some of the manners that their offspring later embraced were foreign to them.
@Ma’at – You do have a point, I feel, except, perhaps, sensitivity to criticism of habits in this country might not necessarily show emotional immaturity or a lack of empathy but rather the natural self defense we have all developed to criticism of our culture. I love eating with my hands especially braaivleis, but would do it the polite way if it offends another. My daughter says she will never recover from seeing a sheep’s head revolve in the microwave (old recipe, new way), I really can’t see what she’s on about. Someone from Lesotho told me how he can’t wait to go home to eat horsemeat again. Being a horse lover, all I could force out was: “what does it taste like?”
@Lihle – Perhaps African versus Western isn’t the real problem but level of development does. If your colleagues make a comment again simply add a strange ritual before every meal. (It does not have to be real). If they laugh with you, you know they were joking with you out of camarederie, if not and they were actually being derogatory, well, there is always the one colleague who needs one’s patience, understanding and teaching…
So who gets to define what is good manners and what is bad manners? I promise most whities don’t even know what constitutes good or bad manners in almost any African culture. (I’m allowed to say this ‘cos I’m a whitie)
Surely the only reasonable thing to do is to call a great conference, allow all cultures to present their own traditions, argue about it, maybe throw in a couple of focus-groups, and then democratically vote on the desired outcome, to which all South Africans must adhere!
Or else we could just share backgrounds, cultures, stories, information etc. with a whole lot less sensitivity and some more openess. We’ve got so much to learn about one another, let’s add table manners and food ettiquette to the list.
But, at the end of the day, it’s just table manners
P.S. Tripe is nasty, and so is lobster!
Sean–I adore a being that express his/her thoughts and thinking, and you’re damn right civilised people are not civilised….i was doing my shopping in this expensive clothes shop one day and only the so called grandsons & daughter of co-founders of civilisation were there and i had no problem with that since i knew what i wanted…the problem started when i noticed that i’m being escorted since i was the only one of my kind and the other beings were doing their shopping freely.
Good article. I think it’s not about etiquette or manners, it’s about sensitivity and that takes time to develop. It also often needs understanding from both sides. I often make jokes about food and I get all kind s of responses from ugly looks to heavy laughter. I don’t have gram of mal-intent and respect individual responses and sesitivities with future comment. I would have probably asked you with a laugh what’s it like eating a spare tyre. I am an extremely fussy eater and have also been the butt of many comments.
A few examples that springs to mind are:
1. I detest chicken and any fowl in every way and I cannot even watch a person eating chicken but if confronted with such a situation, I will always wiggle out of the situation politely and in silence.
2. I detest fish and seafood, both taste and smell and also try and remove myself without offending. If I can avoid it from the beggining the better.
3′ I hate food that looks back at me like heads, piglets, etc.
We all learn with time. Food is food. With regard to table tools, I am afraid your knowledge is very limited. Many ‘westeners’ like me eat like they want and stuff the rest. I use whatever I feel like as tools and never wory about the rest. I have no time to care what others think. Believe me, there are plenty of us.
Lihle your final point is ridiculous. Of course some white people will comment on your food – because they are rude.! Other white people won’t because they have manners.
Have you only recently discovered that some people are rude?
Sho, that’s groundbreaking.
Ms Lihle, I just want to check to see if I get the point: As your mother said: It’s rude to comment on other people’s food.” Which is the equivalent to our mothers’ saying “it’s rude to make other people feel uncomfortable.” So, it seems to me it’s not black or white; our mothers/grandmothers were all right.
Table manners are odd; English keep their hands in their laps when at the table and not eating; the French keep their forearms on the table. Maybe it harkens back to the Good Old Days and wanting to be sure that weapons were not around.
A Korean associate of my husband offered us a rare treat; herring liver, which tastes and feels in the mouth, exactly like crumpled up aluminum foil. Not much to do about it but swallow; they honoured us, we honor them with our courtesy.
So maybe the thing is to eat foods as they are eaten within their tradition? Fried eggs eaten by hand are messy and offensive to the onlooker.
Not all whities are out of order, only the butt ones…LOL, i’m a family friend to the Johnsons and Swart and they spoil me rotten with anything
!!!