More nshima please

I went to Phiri's Guesthouse down the road hoping to score some nshima (easy) and t-bone (not so easy). The waiter, after the usual gawping over my limited siLozi, told me that _ma-tbone akuna, kapa kuhu iteni (no t-bone, but chicken is there).

_Kuhu man'gi? (Which chicken?)

_Blyoilah ni kuhu kwa hae (Broiler and Village chicken).

For a minute I considered village chicken, which is Zambian for ultra-super-crazy-Joel-Saladin-eat-my-shorts-free-range. Village chickens never get any food put in front of them, sleep in trees, eat bugs, ticks, crumbs, pieces of tobacco, and spent a great deal of time avoiding the village dog, which shares the same sort of diet. Hence, they are what we might call "brown meat". Taste great, but they have the texture of vulcanized rubber.

_Amutisa bloylah (Bring broiler). Han'gufe ... nishiwile tala. (Step on it ... I'm dying of hunger).

Exit one really happily confused waiter. Visually, there was quite a bit going on the walls; a very bright plastic facsimile of the last supper that had all the Disciples and the Big JC depicted with dimpled apple-cheeks. Must have been some good wine with the fish. Underneath were two prayers; one for before eating, the other for afterwards. The first was somewhat familiar given my limited knowledge of Catholicism ("Bless this food we are about to receive ...") but the other I'd never seen.

Guess people are less thankful when their bellies are full.

The other poster was titled "GOD'S BLESSINGS" ... It depicted stacks of coins, a staggering array of food that no Zambian will likely either eat or see, spreads of dollar bills, and what looked like prayer wheels decorated in mysterious Chinese script.

I don't have the post-gestation means to delve into the mixed messages much; one is a idealized Saviour telling the boys that he was on his way out, in a cataclysm of pain that he wouldn't actively avoid, the model of sacrifice. Some reward for a couple months tramping around the Holy Land, sleeping on the ground, calming the seas, etc. It doesn't seem to jibe with the other poster, which suggests that Christianity is the act of becoming a bucket to gather up the gold raining from Heaven.

We used to laugh at the gaudiness of these messages, without realizing that someone might have put those up to reflect a deep-rooted set of beliefs into which people are truly invested. That's the worst thing about "getting old" in Zambia. You can't really laugh at anything anymore ...

The upload / download statistics look like Dracula's pulse. So much for uploading this thing ...