Shona Table Manners.

By Clem C.

The Shona people  of Zimbabwe have a variety of tantalizing cuisine that you all should at some point have a chance to enjoy, and I am pretty sure, your taste buds will thank you.

On a perfect evening, the father and or the leader of the home sits with his male children and sometimes male neighbors or relations under the starry night discussing critical issues of the community. During the harvest time, they will be roasting maize on the cob, or groundnuts and any other field produce at their disposal. Heroic feats of past warriors are told to the younger men to inspire them, cultural teachings and other vital aspects are passed on to them, success and love stories are discussed over the flickering flames that dance and their shadows dance on their faces. Curious young men listen attentively, their minds actively assimilating every bit of the details so as to tell them to their playmates. The slow breeze transports the aroma of the cooked food from the kitchen hut where mother and girl children as well as other women of the homestead will be preparing dinner, the main meal of the day. After a day's hard work in the fields, at the pasture lands herding cattle,or wherever they would have been, every member of the family, present at the time the food is served settles down to enjoy the food food, which usually is the staple Sadza (made from maize, rapoko or sorghum mealie-meal). The head of the family usually has his food alone, in two plates, one containing the Sadza and the other what it is eaten with, usually meat or vegetables. The younger men and children eat together in their groups. They sit around to plates containing the sadza and the relish and before eating, they clap their hands and ask to be excused by saying  'pamusoroi' then the oldest of them all breaks a piece and eats then the rest of the children follow, giving each other turns to get pieces of food, mixing and eating it. The oldest of the group usually is the first to pick a piece of meat and the younger ones follow suit. No one is allowed to pick a the meat if the oldest hasn't and breaking that rule results in punishment from the mother and punishments vary according to the mother's discipline regime. Before eating again, the family may pray to bless the food.

Quiet is observed during meals and meals are eaten whilst everyone is seated down. Children sit on the floor, on mats with their legs crossed. Women sit on mats, older women with their legs out in front of them kept close together while younger ones sit cross legged like the young boys. The parents may talk during meals. If the children need some more food, they request from the mother by sending usually the youngest with the empty plate and the mother replenishes them and so the dinner goes on.

One interesting thing about this is that before every meal is partaken, the girls who would have helped their mother prepare the food wash the cooking utensils before eating, usually the cooking sticks. There are two sticks used to make sadza, one is a flat wooden stick (mugoti) with a broad base used for mixing mealie-meal in the pot into a thick paste and the other is used initially to mix water and mealie-meal. The mixture is let to boil and cook for about ten minutes and this stick is a thin straight stick with thin wire pieces crafted into its one end in semi-circles to beat the lumps that arise when one mixes boiling water and mealie-meal (musika). When that  process is done, the resultant is a thin paste that is usually part of breakfast and it is called porridge. Sometimes the porridge is made from mixing mealie-meal with boiling milk and sometimes one can add peanut butter to it or just butter. Nowadays people have oat meal and other meals of this sort for breakfast. So before meals, the utensils are supposed to be cleaned and after the meal is over, everyone starting from the father, thanks the mother for preparing the tasty dish and the children follow suit by thanking the mother and the father by their different totems. Then they rise to leave the eating room, the girls to clean the utensils and the boys to go and sit somewhere out of their way, if they had not had their meal at the dare, they then take leave to go to their room(s) or may sit around and plan the following day's chores with their parents. Sometimes, on moonlit warm nights, they sit outside and listen to each others' stories and watch the starry night, dreaming dreams bigger than themselves.