Lee-- ANTH53 - Eating Christmas in the Kalahari Richard...

Unformatted text preview: Eating Christmas in the Kalahari Richard Borshay Lee The lKung Bushmen’s knowledge of Christmas is thirdhand. The London Missionary Society brought the holiday to the southern Tswana tribes in the early nineteenth century. Later, native cate- chists spread the idea far and wide among the Bantu-speaking pastoralists, even in the remotest corners of the Kala— hari Desert. The Bushmen‘s idea of the Christmas story, stripped to its essen- tials, is “praise the birth of white man’s god-chief”; what keeps their interest in the holiday high is the Tswana-Herero custom of slaughtering an ox for his Bushmen neighbors as an annual good- will gesture. Since the 1930’s, part of the Bushmen’s annual round of activities has included a December congregation at the cattle posts for trading, marriage brokering, and several days of trance- dance feasting at which the local Tswana headman is host. As a social anthropologist working with !Kung Bushmen, I found that the Christmas ox custom suited my pur- poses. I had come to the Kalahari to study the hunting and gathering subsis- tence economy of the lKung, and to ac- complish this it was essential not to provide them with food, share my own food, or interfere in any way with their food-gathering activities. While liberal handouts of tobacco and medical sup- plies were appreciated, they were scarcely adequate to erase the glaring disparity in wealth between the anthro- . pologist, who maintained a two-month inventory of canned goods, and the Bushmen, who rarely had a day’s supply of food on hand. My approach, while paying off in terms of data, left me open to frequent accusations of stinginess and hard—heartedness. By their lights, I was a miser. The Christmas ox was to be my way of saying thank you for the cooperation of the past year; and since it was to be our last Christmas in the field, 1 determined to slaughter the largest, meatiest ox that money could buy, insuring that the feast and trance—dance would be a success. Through December I kept my eyes open at the wells as the cattle were brought down for watering. Several ani— mals were offered, but none had quite the grossness that I had in mind. Then, ten days before the holiday, a Herero friend led an ox of astonishing size and mass up to our camp. It was solid black, stood five feet high at the shoulder, had a five- foot span of -horn_s, and must have weighed 1,200 pounds on the hoof. Food consumption calculations are my spe- cialty, and I quickly figured that bones and viscera aside, there was enough meat—at least four pounds—for every man, woman, and child of the 150 Bush- men in the vicinity of lai/ai who were ex- pected at the feast. Having found the right animal at last, I paid the Herero £20 ($56) and asked him to keep the beast with his herd until Christmas day. The next morning word spread among the people that the big solid black one was the ox chosen by / ontah (my Bushman name; it means, roughly, “whitey”) for the Christmas feast. That afternoon I received the first 20 delegation. Benla, an outspoken sixty- a year—old mother of five, came to the ' point slowly. “Where were you planning to eat Christmas?” “Right here at lai/ai,” I replied. “Alone or with others?" “I expect to invite all the people to eat Christmas with me." “Eat what?" “I have purchased Yehave’s black ox, and I am going to slaughter and cook it." “That’s what we were told at the well but refused to believe it until we heard it if from yourself.” "Miller; a m: -wsmiannrn-nawsw: ' “Well, it’s the black one,” I replied expansively, although wondering what she was driving at. “Oh, no!” Benla groaned, turning to ' her group. “They were right.“ Turning back to me she asked, “Do you expect us to eat that bag of bones?” “Bag of bones! It’s the biggest ox at I aifai.” “Big, yes, but old. And thin. Every- body knows there’s no meat on that old ox. What did you expect us to eat off it, the horns?” Everybody chuckled at Benla‘s one- liner as they walked away, but all I could manage was a weak grin. That evening it was the turn of the young men. They came to sit at our evening fire. lgaugo. about my age. spoke to me man-to-man. “lontah, you have always been square with us,” he lied. “What has happened to change-your heart? That sack of guts and bones of Yehave’s will hardly feed one the eat eat ox, it.” e1] 1 it led hat [0 113 US it/ 11d it, re- lid he IUI' J'e‘ ire [0 nd [16 Camp, let alone all the Bushmen around ailajj’ And he proceeded to enumerate the seven camps in the lai/ai v1c1n1ty, family by family. “Perhaps you have for- gotten that We are not few, but many. Or are you too blind to tell the difference be— tween a proper cow and an old wreck? That ex is thin to the point of death.” “Look, you guys,” I retorted, "that is a beautiful animal, and I”rn sure you will eat it with pleasure at Christmas.” “Of course we will eat it; it‘s food. But it won’t fill us up to the point where we will have enough strength to dance. We will eat and go home to bed with stomachs rumbling.” That night as we turned in, I asked my wife, Nancy: “What did you think of the black ox?" “It looked enormous to me. Why?” “Well, about eight different people have told me I got gypped; that the ox is nothing but bones.” “What’s the angle?” Nancy asked. “Did they have a better one to sell?” “No, they just said that it was going to be a grim Christmas because there won’t be enough meat to go around. Maybe I’ll get an independent judge to look at the beast in the morning.” Bright and early, Halingisi, a Tswana cattle owner, appeared at our camp. But before I could ask him to give me his opinion on Yehave’s black ox, he gave me the eye signal that indicated a confi- dential chat. We left the camp and sat down. “Iontah, I’m surprised at you: you’ve lived here for three years and still ha- ven’t learned anything about cattle.” “But what else can a person do but choose the biggest, strongest animal one can find?” I retorted. “Look, just because an animal is big doesn’t mean that it has plenty of meat on it. The black one was a beauty when it was younger, but now it is thin to the point of death." “Well I’ve already bought it. What Can I do at this stage?” “Bought it already? I thought you were just considering it. Well, you’ll have to kill it and serve it, I suppose. But don't expect much of a dance to follow.” My spirits dropped rapidly. I could believe that Benla and [gauge just might be putting me on about the black ox, but Article 3. Eating Christmas in the Kalahari Halingisi seemed to be an impartial critic. I went around that day feeling as though I had bought a lemon of a used car. In the afternoon it was Tomazo‘s turn. Tomazo is a fine hunter, a top trance per- former. .. and one of my most reliable inw formants. He approached the subject of the Christmas cow as part of my continu- ing Bushman education. “My friend, the way it is with us Bushmen,” he began, “is that we love meat. And even more than that, we love fat. When we hunt we always search for the fat ones, the ones dripping with lay- ers of white fat: fat that turns into a clear, thick oil in the cooking pot, fat that slides down your gullet, fills your stomach and gives you a roaring diarrhea,” he rhapso- dized. “So, feeling as we do," he continued, “it gives us pain to be served such a scrawny thing as Yehave’s black ox. It is big, yes, and no doubt its giant bones are good for soup, but fat is what we really crave and so we will eat Christmas this year with a heavy heart.” The prospect of a gloomy Christmas now had me worried, so I asked Tomazo what I could do about it. “Look for a fat one, a young one... smaller, but fat. Fat enough to make us I lgom (‘evacuate the bowels’), then we will be happy.” My suspicions were aroused when Tomazo said that he happened to know of a young, fat, barren cow that the owner was willing to part with. Was Tomazo working on commission, I won— dered? But I dispelled this unworthy thought when we approached the Herero owner of the cow in question and found that he had decided not to sell. The scrawny wreck of a Christmas ox now became the talk of the lai/ai water hole and was the first news told to the outlying groups as they began to come in from the bush for the feast. What finally convinced me that real trouble might be brewing was the visit from ulau, an old conservative with a reputation for fierce- ness. His nickname meant spear and re- ferred to an incident thirty years ago in which he had speared a man to death. He had an intense manner; fixing me with his eyes, he said in clipped tones: 21 “I have only just heard about the black ox today, or else I would have come here earlier. lontah, do you hon- estly think you can servemeat like that to people and avoid a fight?” He paused, letting the implications sink in. “I don’t mean fight you, lontah; you are a white man. I mean a fight between Bushmen. There are many fierce ones here, and with such a small quantity of meat to dis« tribute, how can you give everybody a fair share? Someone is sure to accuse an- other of taking too much or hogging all the choice pieces. Then you will see what ha ens when some go hung while others eat. f____.... The possibility of at least a serious ar- gument struck me as all too real. I had witnessed the tension that surrounds the distribution of meat from a kudu or gemsbok kill, and had documented many arguments that sprang up from a real or imagined slight in meat distribution. The owners of a kill may spend up to two hours arranging and rearranging the piles of meat under the gaze of a circle of re- cipients before handing them out. And I also knew that the Christmas feast at fail ai would be bringing together groups that had fended in the past. Convinced now of the gravity of the situation, I went in earnest to search for a second cow; but all my inquiries failed to turn one up. The Christmas feast was evidently going to be a disaster, and the incessant complaints about the meagerness of the ox had already taken the fun out of it for me. Moreover, I was getting bored with the wisecracks, and after losing my tem— per a few times, I resolved to serve the beast anyway. If the meat fell short, the hell with it. In the Bushmen idiom, I an- nounced to all who would listen: “I am a poor man and blind. If I have chosen one that is too old and too thin, we will eat it anyway and see if there is enough meat there to quiet the rumbling of our stomachs.” On hearing this speech, Benia offered me a rare word of comfort. “It’s thin,” she said philosophically, “but the bones will make a good soup.” At dawn Christmas morning, instinct told me to turn over the butchering and cooking to-a friend and take off with Nancy to spend Christmas alone in the i ANNUAL EDITIONS bush. But curiosity kept me from retreat- ing. I wanted to see what such a scrawny ox looked like on butchering and if there was going to be a fight, I wanted to catch every word of it. Anthropologists are in- curable that way. The great beast was driven up to our dancing ground, and a shot in the fore- head dropped it in its tracks. Then, freshly cut branches were heaped around the fallen carcass to receive the meat. Ten men volunteered to help with the cutting. I asked [gauge to make the breast bone cut. This out, which begins the butchering process for most large game, offers easy access for removal of the viscera. But it also allows the hunter to spot-check the amount of fat on the animal. A fat game animal carries a white layer up to an inch thick on the chest, while in a thin one, the knife will quickly cut to bone. All eyes fixed on his hand as fgaugo, dwarfed by the great car- cass, knelt to the breast. The first cut opened a pool of solid white in the black skin. The second and third cut widened and deepened the creamy white. Still no bone. It was pure fat; it must have been two inches thick. “Hey lgau,” I burst out, “that ox is loaded with fat. Whats this about the ox being too thin to bother eating? Are you out of your mind?" "Fat?" lgau shot back, “You call that fat? This wreck is thin, sick, dead!” And he broke out laughing. So did everyone else. They rolled on the ground, para- lyzed with laughter. Everybody laughed except me; Iwas thinking. I ran back to the tent and burst in just as Nancy was getting up. “Hey, the black ox. It’s fat as hell! They were kidding about it being too thin to eat. It was a joke or something. A put-on. Everyone is really delighted with it!” "Some joke," my wife replied. “It was so funny that you were ready to pack up and leave lai/ai.” If it had indeed been a joke, it had been an extraordinarily convincing one, and tinged, I thought, with more than a touch of malice as many jokes are. Nev- ertheless, that it was a joke lifted my spirits considerably, and I returned to the ' butchering site where the shape of the ox was rapidly disappearing under the axes and knives of the butchers. The atmo- sphere had become festive. Grinning broadly, their arms covered with blood well past the elbow, men packed chunks of meat into the big cast-iron cooking pots, fifty pounds to the load, and mut- tered and chuckled all the while about the thinness and worthlessness of the an- imal and lontah’s poor judgment. We danced and ate that ex two days and two nights; we cooked and distrib- uted fourteen potfuls of meat and no one went home hungry and no fights broke out. But the “joke” stayed in my mind. I had a growing feeling that something im- portant had happened in my relationship with the Bushmen and that the clue lay in the meaning of the joke. Several days later, when most of the people had dis- persed back to the bush camps, I raised the question with Hakekgose, a Tswana man who had grown up among the lKung, married a lKung girl, and who probably knew their culture better than any other non—Bushman. “With us whites," I began, “Christ- mas is supposed to be the day of friend- ship and brotherly love. What I can’t figure out is why the Bushmen went to such' lengths to criticize and belittle the ox I had bought for the feast. The animal was perfectly good and their jokes and wisecracks practically ruined the holiday for me.” 5 “So it really did bother you,’ said Hakekgose. “Well, that’s the way they always talk. When I take my rifle and go hunting with them, if I miss, they laugh at me for the rest of the day. But even if I hit and bring one down, it‘s no better. To them, the kill is always too small or too old or too thin; and as we sit down on the kill site to cook and eat the liver, they keep grumbling, even with their mouths full of meat. They say things like, ‘Oh this is awful! What a worthless animal! Whatever made me think that this Tswana rascal could huntl’ ” “Is this the way outsiders are treated?” I asked. “No, it is their custom; they talk that way to each other too. Go and ask them.” lgaugo had been one of the most en- thusiastic in making me feel bad about the merit of the Christmas ox. I sought him out first. 22 "Why did you tell me the black ox was worthless, when you could see that it was loaded with fat and meat?" “It is our way,” he said smiling. “We always like to fool people about that. Say there is a Bushman who has been ham 1’53 ing. He must not come home and an- {- nounce like a braggard, ‘I have killed a big one in the bush!’ He must first sit down in silence until I or someone else :5‘5- comes up to his fire and asks, ‘What did you see today?’ He replies quietly, ‘Ah, 1"; I’m no good for hunting. I saw nothing at all [pause] just a little tiny one.’ Then I smile to myself,” fgaugo continued, “be— cause I know he has killed something big." "In the morning we make up a party of four or five people to cut up and carry the meat back to the camp. When we ar- rive at the kill we examine it and cry out, ‘You mean to say you have dragged us all the way out here in order to make us . cart home your pile of bones? Oh, if I had known it was this thin I wouldn’t have come.’ Another one pipes up, ‘Peo- pie, to think I gave up a nice day in the shade for this. At home we may be hun- gry but at least we have nice cool water 1: to drink.‘ If the horns are big, someone says, ‘Did you think that somehow you i' were going to boil down the horns for : soup?’ “To all this you must respond in kind. ‘I agree,’ you say, ‘this one is not worth the effort; let’s just cook the liver for strength and leave the rest for the hyenas. It is not too late to hunt today and even a duiker or a steenbok would be better than this mess.’ “Then you set to work nevertheless; butcher the animal, carry the meat back to the camp and everyone eats," lgaugo concluded. Things were beginning to make sense. Next, I went to Tomazo. He cor- roborated lgaugo’s story of the obliga— tory insults over a kill and added a few details of his own. “But,” I asked, “why insult a man af- ter he has gone to all that trouble to track and kill an animal and when he is going to share the meat with you so that your children will have something to eat?” “Arrogance,” was his cryptic answer. “Arrogance?” ._ a. .w i Lama. «Mimeamwmwmmaielmwmmkwfiflfi as 4'; .}- “Yes, when a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can’t accept this. We refuse one who casts, for someday his ride w m e him kill somebody. So we always speak gimme 6-001 Wgrnake him gentle.” 1But why didn’t you tell me this be- fore?” I asked Tomazo with some heat. “Because you never asked me," said Tomazo, echoing the refrain that has come to haunt every field ethnographer. The pieces now fell into place. I had known for a long time that in situations of social conflict with Bushmen I held all the cards. I was the only source of to- bacco in a thousand square miles, and I was not incapable of cutting an individ- ual off for non-cooperation. Though my boycott never lasted longer than a few days, it was an indication of my strength. People resented my presence at the water Reprinted with permission fr om Natural History, Article 3. Eating Christmas in the Kalahari hole, yet simultaneously dreaded my leaving. In short] was a perfect target for the charge of arrogance and for the Bush- men tactic of enforcing humility. I had been taught an object lesson by the Bushmen; it had come from an unex- pected corner and had hurt me in a vul- nerable area. For the big black ox was to be the one totally generous, unstinting act of my year at iai/ai, and I was quite unprepared for the reaction I received. As I read it, their message was this: There are no totally generous acts. All “acts” have an element of calculation. One black ox slaughtered at Christmas does not wipe out a year of careful ma- nipulation of gifts given to serve your own ends. After all, to kill an animal and share the meat with people is really no more than Eushrnenci—‘ofimt other ev- ery day’and with far less fanfare. In them how the Bushmen had played out the farce—col- lectively straight-faced to the end. Curi- December1969, pp. 14—22, 60764.©1969 by Natural History Magazine. ously, the episode reminded me of the Good Soldier Schweik and his marvelous encounters with authority. Like Sch- weik, the Bushmen had retained a thorough—going skepticism of good intentions. Was it this independence of spirit, I wondered, that had kept them culturally viable in the face of generations of contact with more powerful societies, both black and white? The thought that the Bushmen were alive and well in the Kalahari was strangely comforting. Perhaps, armed with that independence and with their su- perb knowledge of their environment, they might yet survive the future. Richard Borshay lee is afuliprofessor ofan- thropoiogy at the University of Toronto. He has done extensive fieldwork in southern A} rim, is coediror of Man the Hunter (1968) and Kalahari Hunter—Gatherers (1976), and aut...
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