Good old days, God, and time comparatives

Good old days.

You have heard the expression many times. Someone even DARED transform THIS into sacred initials, i.e. GOD.

Made me remember WUT. When Ugali Was Tops. Nowadays Chips is Top and Ugali Bottom. NCTU. Think abbreviations can be nonsensical?

WMWM. When men were men (and went to war)

WWWW. When women were women (and wore miniskirts).

“Better” days?

G.O.D.

Have heard this since I was young. I remember one teacher was caning us, five primary school children. Two boys started bawling like sheep. The teacher paused, sighed, held the huge stick in the air and chuckled. Although it was over fifty years ago I can still visualise the exasperated, glaring man. “When I was you age, we would be hit harder! With a bigger stick! And none of us cried. You are a bunch of sissies...”

Yeah, to be called a sissy in the 1960s, for us boys was a proper insult. Best be tapped by knuckles on your head (Konzi, in Swahili) than be rebuked as “too feminine”....

Come 2019, I just watched a clip of a young Dar es Salaam female claiming she will never date a Dar fella “because they are too soft and lazy and cannot even work in a farm, THESE DAYS...

Or

GOOD Old Days?

I can picture my late mother. We are at a village somewhere in Old Moshi, Kilimanjaro. Sweating, she is cooking. Back then we tots thought mothers just sweated when they were in the kitchen. But mothers never complained. From dawn to dusk; they cleaned, tilled the land, prepared us, tots, for school; and we thought that was the norm.

These Days- it is called “stress.”

Once in a while, Mother would make Cow feet (Makanyagio, in Swahili). I did not know why it was such tough work until many, many decades later; I tried cooking cow feet here, in London.

But I did not connect my mother’s makanyagio culinary art with what I was doing in London before living in Brazil. In between Old Moshi, Tanzania and Brazil, cow-feet or chicken legs, were considered low class food.

I have never been in a Wazungu household and seen them eating animal’s feet.

It was in Brazil that I learnt that cow feet were special. Hold on. In Brazil it is a class (and race) based meal too. They call it Mocotó. We had a house maid. She was from Bahia, the north east area of Brazil where majority African slaves were exported to, world-wide.

Bahia produces the most vibrant music including one of the best Latin American authors, Jorge Amado. To-date, Amado’s novels have been translated into 49 languages!

So the dear maid would make us the finest Mocotó; supposed to give strength and vitality.

“O Mocoto vai fazer voces muitos fortes!” She would declare, proudly, in Portuguese. And that is when I started appreciating Kilimanjaro and my dear mum sweating for hours making Supu ya Makanyagio (kongoro). You know why?

Takes at least five hours to prepare. Presently, there are multiple You Tube videos made by Brazilians (in Portuguese) on how to fix Mocotó or Cow-feet.

The Brazilian method is slightly different from our Swahili way of preparation. While most of us talk about the “Supu” (stew) Brazilians tend to highlight the benefits of the actual cow foot cartilage. Science.

For example you hear athletes being injected with “cortico-steroid” to give relief to joint pain. A lot of spices, including cloves, are thrown into the mix.

Despite all that certain classes of people look down on eating any bird or animal’s feet ...no wonder it is frowned upon. But in the Good Old Days- eating certain things was the natural norm.

Last week this column discussed forwarded WhatsApp videos. True; short online clips have become the biggest time- spending- activity. So much that I heard a West African comedian advising how to receive and dispatch WhatsApp footage. “Make sure you only send those that fit your own group...”

Etiquette aside, a minute plus film had a G.O. D. theme. The narrator had an American accent. He kicked off by wondering how those who grew up in the 1950s to early 1980s survived.

“...We played outside all day. We climbed trees and used bicycles without helmets. When we wanted to visit someone we just went and knocked at their door.”

Meaning we did not have to make an appointment or text, first. It is as if those days were better. But like I said at the beginning of this chat, when we were little (50-60 years ago) we were reminded how times were “better” 50 years before THAT.

Each time we live, we tend to think we are going THROUGH HELL. Yet many seasons after, the comparison is made and romance and sentimentality takes over. Time is a very strange animal. With delicious feet...!