Meat and Vegetarianism

Linked with the below post about food, vegetarianism is virtually unknown in the more traditional areas of S.A. Hence, vegetarians aren’t catered for at all at COTT, so when Jon came he just had vegetables and rice! Not only is it not catered for, but it is considered V strange indeed! Most students were shocked when they found out Jon was veggie and wanted to know why, how long he had been and importantly, when he would start eating meat again!! The fact he’s been veggie long before he knew me, and for all of his adult life to date and will be in the future, was something many of them just couldn’t comprehend. Though I love my meat, especially bacon sandwiches, I came to his defence trying to explain that there were many vegetarians in England, and they seemed able to cope with the thought of it better when they realised it was a cultural things we did!

As for meat, it was the staple diet of those from the more traditional S.As cultures and so they did not consider a vegetarian meal to be a full meal at all. Also linked to cultural views, was the fact that some of them wouldn’t eat certain meats. I can’t remember who ate what, but some cultures wouldn’t eat pork, whereas others wouldn’t eat beef, and some wouldn’t eat pork or beef! So there was always a chicken alternative to cater for these. At first I thought this as odd and wanted to know why they wouldn’t eat certain meat, but found most unable to answer this question. I later realised it wasn’t that odd at all, as we don’t eat, for example, donkey, but there is no reason why we don’t. However, if I went to a place where they did eat donkey, then I too would, whereas these people wouldn’t ever eat pork or beef.

Most meat was served on the bone and was eaten with fingers. All the meat was eaten. E.G. If you had a chicken drumstick, just 2 completely clean bones would be left on the plate, with the rest being eaten, the ends, the cartilage, the pink bits of meat, the grey bits of meat, ALL of it! The bones were also sucked and some even gnawed on them, therefore eating much of the bones as well.