[Facebook post 28 December 2021]

My Mama was thirteen when she realized that meat was the flesh of a dead animal. It disgusted her so intensely that she vowed to never eat it again. To this day, she hasn't.

In primary school, my brother and I had a separate "vegetarian table" to sit at in the dinner hall. Just the two of us. We were an anomaly. "What do you eat?" was a question that always bewildered me, as though my classmates were all blood-thirsty carnivores who had never seen a potato before.

I first ate meat when I was eighteen. In a small sandy courtyard in Senegal I watched a man kill a goat, watched wives cook it over a fire, watched the kids play with the skull and when offered, I ate it with them. Lots to chew on...

My journey with the rurals here in South Africa has been filled with ritual slaughter. I've become one of those wives cooking fresh meat over fires. This time it's been different though.

For ritual purposes the Dzedze family are on a new diet. No meat or dairy, nor oil or spices. My husband's family now know I have a way with this kind of cuisine so I've been put in charge of cooking for everyone, with Mama Sabine's assistance.

Aunts and uncles are declaring I've saved them all from bad food and I'm chuffed. Rather than washing cow intestines or cooking the meat of a sheep that was bleating hours prior, I'm russling up big pots of veggies and blessing the bodies of these loved ones in a food language I speak well.

It's opened up lots for me and given me opportunity to reflect on this wild path I've walked. A sweet way to find the meeting ground between Yana and Nomtha.