The road from Eastern Zambia to Lusaka (Zambia’s capital city) winds mostly through villages, and on the seven-hour bus ride you see more goats than people on the road. At one point the road winds up through the Manenekela hills, giving beautiful views of the forest to take your mind off the treacherous road.
One morning, the bus from Eastern stopped in the hills to greet the morning bus coming from the opposite direction. With the entire road blocked, the two bus drivers chatted and laughed through the windows and exchanged gifts. Our driver passed the other bus a large dead guinea fowl that had flown to its death against our windshield an hour earlier. The other driver passed over a huge severed goat leg. Each driver was thrilled with their fresh meat, had a good laugh, and their journeys continued.
I too had the pleasure of receiving severed goat legs as gifts. My brother in law once came to visit and brought an entire leg of goat with him, hoof and all. My son, despite being raised in Africa, held the American tendency of skepticism about why we had to have whole legs in the kitchen and not the packaged American meat that Grandma had at her house in America. However, he changed his tune when a vacation to the game park in Eastern Zambia with his American grandparents didn’t go quite as planned.
We started off driving at 5am from Lusaka and arrived at dusk at the game park lodge, only to discover that our rooms were given up by the lodge owners because two African presidents were meeting there the next day. My sister-in-law quickly called her friend Grace, who lived near the park, and (true to her name) graciously offered her spare bedrooms for us. After 12 hours of driving, dusty and tired and hot, we ended up in a stranger’s house instead of the lodge.
After we freshened up, we were so exhausted as it was now late at night, but Grace insisted we eat. She welcomed us into the dining room where we discovered her table was overflowing with dishes that she had prepared just for us. The grand centerpiece on the table was an entire warthog leg, perfectly grilled for us. My 7-year-old son’s eyes lit up as his dad carved the warthog, and he took the biggest helping.
We feasted that night, thanks to Amazing Grace. To this day my parents use her as their shining example of Zambian hospitality. To this day my son still states that grilled (whole) leg of warthog is his favorite meat.
