Imperial breakfast
Safari in Namibia...
Our breakfast table was a massive black carved monstrosity, with tall-backed thick chairs that took muscle to scoot back, all hand-carved deep reliefs of elephants and gemsbok, lions and impala, every wooden scene different and expensive.
Everyone was eating in an early-morning silence, slurping and burping away at bacon and ostrich eggs. This morning, like every morning so far and after, I marvelled wide-eyed at eight white people of European colonial origin sitting at an ornate table while three black African locals scurried about serve us as quickly and quietly as possible.
The day before, at breakfast at that very same table, my cousin Kerry told a story about his last hunting trip.
Last January, he and his young daughter Caroline trekked over a one hundred miles through jungle in Cameroon in search of leopard and other large game. Among his other adventures, he told a story about how his local guides killed a baboon.
The guides threw the baboon on the camp fire that night-the whole baboon, head and fur-and toasted it until the fur was singed dark and black, creating a kind of seal. The guides strung the baboon up on a tree for two days and then on the third day, they ate it. Kerry and Caroline did not partake.
Everyone at the breakfast table that morning was engrossed in his story. The two professional hunters, Francois and Peter, along with Peter’s wife, all South Africans since birth, gaped and balked. It felt uncomfortable suddenly to be sitting at the table.
Peter’s wife stood and helped the black cook pick up empty plates, muttering that she would never have baboon in her kitchen, nor will she ever, ever let dog or cat sizzle on her stove-in other words, no jackal or any lions or leopards.
“Go to China if you want cat or monkey,” she said tartly with her thick German accent, insisting. “Ay, they are different over there in Cameroon.” On this ranch and at this table, they serve everything else from impala to eland, hartebeest to zebra. But no carnivores.
“Yeah, that baboon was singed through, “ Kerry added repeating himself and enjoying the attention. “Never knew you’d cook something by just throwing it whole on the fire. And those guides ate it up. Caroline and I wouldn’t eat it. No way.”
A kind of strange, stark silence followed as one of the black ladies came and filled our glasses, then retired back in the kitchen.
To break the sudden, strange tension, Kerry, who is a bit crass and mischievous, made a deep grimace and scrunched up his hands like a T-Rex. Baring his teeth, and with a wicked bout of laughter, he said, “That baboon looked a bit like this up on that tree, haha, with its eyes open, singed black and dangling there for three days.” Kerry snapped his teeth at us like a rodent.
Peter, at one head of the table, and Francois at the other, both found this incredibly funny. Peter, who’d been sipping orange juice from under a bushy German moustache rivalling Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s, chuckled loudly. Francois hiccupped and slapped Kerry on the shoulder.
“Yeah, don’t let the blacks see that thing! Oh golly, don’t let the blacks see it,” Peter said. The corners of his moustache lifted with his smile. He had this strange expression on his face that suddenly made time stand still, referencing white sails and fields of Caribbean sugar cane, meek women, rifle butts and shackles.
Francois giggled hysterically and Peter’s wife gave a smiling nod. The room was full of this release of tension, everyone snorting and chuckling and banging on the table. Their hyper Jack Russell hunting terrier bounced with the sudden change of emotion, yipping and snarling at our feet, teeth bared, only stopping for a moment to look at me as if to ask, why aren’t you laughing too?
Our breakfast table was a massive black carved monstrosity, with tall-backed thick chairs that took muscle to scoot back, all hand-carved deep reliefs of elephants and gemsbok, lions and impala, every wooden scene different and expensive.
Everyone was eating in an early-morning silence, slurping and burping away at bacon and ostrich eggs. This morning, like every morning so far and after, I marvelled wide-eyed at eight white people of European colonial origin sitting at an ornate table while three black African locals scurried about serve us as quickly and quietly as possible.
The day before, at breakfast at that very same table, my cousin Kerry told a story about his last hunting trip.
Last January, he and his young daughter Caroline trekked over a one hundred miles through jungle in Cameroon in search of leopard and other large game. Among his other adventures, he told a story about how his local guides killed a baboon.
The guides threw the baboon on the camp fire that night-the whole baboon, head and fur-and toasted it until the fur was singed dark and black, creating a kind of seal. The guides strung the baboon up on a tree for two days and then on the third day, they ate it. Kerry and Caroline did not partake.
Everyone at the breakfast table that morning was engrossed in his story. The two professional hunters, Francois and Peter, along with Peter’s wife, all South Africans since birth, gaped and balked. It felt uncomfortable suddenly to be sitting at the table.
Peter’s wife stood and helped the black cook pick up empty plates, muttering that she would never have baboon in her kitchen, nor will she ever, ever let dog or cat sizzle on her stove-in other words, no jackal or any lions or leopards.
“Go to China if you want cat or monkey,” she said tartly with her thick German accent, insisting. “Ay, they are different over there in Cameroon.” On this ranch and at this table, they serve everything else from impala to eland, hartebeest to zebra. But no carnivores.
“Yeah, that baboon was singed through, “ Kerry added repeating himself and enjoying the attention. “Never knew you’d cook something by just throwing it whole on the fire. And those guides ate it up. Caroline and I wouldn’t eat it. No way.”
A kind of strange, stark silence followed as one of the black ladies came and filled our glasses, then retired back in the kitchen.
To break the sudden, strange tension, Kerry, who is a bit crass and mischievous, made a deep grimace and scrunched up his hands like a T-Rex. Baring his teeth, and with a wicked bout of laughter, he said, “That baboon looked a bit like this up on that tree, haha, with its eyes open, singed black and dangling there for three days.” Kerry snapped his teeth at us like a rodent.
Peter, at one head of the table, and Francois at the other, both found this incredibly funny. Peter, who’d been sipping orange juice from under a bushy German moustache rivalling Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s, chuckled loudly. Francois hiccupped and slapped Kerry on the shoulder.
“Yeah, don’t let the blacks see that thing! Oh golly, don’t let the blacks see it,” Peter said. The corners of his moustache lifted with his smile. He had this strange expression on his face that suddenly made time stand still, referencing white sails and fields of Caribbean sugar cane, meek women, rifle butts and shackles.
Francois giggled hysterically and Peter’s wife gave a smiling nod. The room was full of this release of tension, everyone snorting and chuckling and banging on the table. Their hyper Jack Russell hunting terrier bounced with the sudden change of emotion, yipping and snarling at our feet, teeth bared, only stopping for a moment to look at me as if to ask, why aren’t you laughing too?