EAT, PRAY LOVE HORSEMEAT INNIE ELSIES I think I was about 7 years old when I woke up early on a Saturday morning on the yard in Balvenie Road, Elsies River to the wailing cry of my father and Mr Erasmus entering the house with the bloodied single blade of a scissors shouting :Daai varke het my perdjie gestiek! (The pigs stabbed my horse). Between my mother consoling him, Grandmother Jakoba praying that no further violence would result from this incident and other mothers on the yard nervously pleading that their men do not get involved in bloed vegelding (revenge) I picked up that this was about my father having broked (sold vegetables) on the route of a rival in Ses straat (Sixth street). Now I was too young to understand what exactly happened around the bloed vergelding issue, but a few days later the horse murderer from Ses Straat visited my father and uncles in tears with his wife and children with R50 (more like R1500 today), begging for forgiveness. I think my father forgave him and later worked the Ses straat route with him with the a new horse provided by the culprit. However, in Elsies River revenge is as sweet as horse meat and some time later the yard was treated to several three legged pots on quite a few fires filled with good sized chunks of pure muscular red coloured meat. This was definitely not the offerings of my Father and Mr Erasmuss (aka die blokman) monthly slaughtering of the other livestock in the yard but none of us dared say anything. I asked my father at the time about what had happened to the other horse but he went into some deep philosophical mood and told me: Jy is nog te jonk om te verstaan, eendag sal dit alles sin maak. (You are too young to understand, one day it will make sense). Reading the haitus hernia about horse meat in Europe made me think as deeply and dialecticallly about my experiences with horse meat when I was 7 years old. This can only be said like a Elsies River klonkie : Goedtjoe! Dis lank wat julle colonial moegoes ge-broke het op os roetes in Afrika! Vriet perd! This story was not for the ideologically sensitive, to be taken literally with requisite regard for the deeper ontological meaning embedded therein. Jeremy from the Elsies.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 05:12:29 +0000