Pork Ribs & Poverty kwaMereki
On Saturday a friend of mine had a birthday and invited us to a celebratory meat-fest at the VERY popular Mereki in Warren Park, Harare. The taste of meat and sadza at this place is legendary.
Arriving there at around 3pm, we had some trouble finding parking as the place was so full of meat and braai loving Hararians.
We were accosted by a group of women each offering to barbecue our meat and cook sadza for us. My friend knew one of the women- he is a regular at this place as he lives nearby- and so she took care of us.
The sadza was hot when it came and tasted amazing with the tender pork ribs that had been lovingly braaied by “Mai Vincent”. The salad was the “Mereki Special” of tomatoes, onions and cucumbers.
As we ate, I noticed some young girls of about 11-12 milling around. Some were selling cellphone airtime, sweets, etc though others seemed to be just loitering.
When we stopped eating they descended upon us. “Can we finish off your food?” they asked in Shona. There were glances all round as the four of us had a non-verbal conference- then we gave them the go ahead.
They leapt onto the trays of food, pulled them to the ground and grabbed the bones and left over meat in one hand while they wolfed down the sadza with the other.
I have never seen sadza go down so fast. In a flash the trays were empty. We were stunned. I was so pained that I couldn’t even get myself to take a photograph. I held the camera in my hands, frozen by the cold reality that had just been thrown at our feet. Our party exchanged sad glances.
A few cars away from us, a huge Landcruiser had just parked and an excited group of young people were offloading cooler boxes filled with Windhoek Lager and other imported drinks from the back…
Written by fungaijames on June 6th, 2008 with
11 comments.
Read more articles on Entertainment Diary and Kufunga- My Thoughts.
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Unofungei? Unoitei? I capture the stories that often escape the lenses of big media. I record the life of a pregnant nation. This is a door into the country that I love. These are my thoughts. These are my memories... 
#1. June 16th, 2008, at 7:39 AM.
These are the tragic examples of the extremes in social equity that we now find so common place in Zimbabwe today. The greater tragedy is that we are now so used to seeing this level of social lack that we are now numb to it. The question then becomes, ‘What can we do about it?” I’m afraid at a corporate/ state level there isn’t much much, but as individuals I believe we can do what we can on a case by case level. The fact that you gave them some food is noble but I wonder if there was something more you could have done right there? Am not sure I have the answer for that. In the final analysis one is left with very little they can do I guess……..Mawani