By Alec Hogg
Since arriving in London almost a year ago, I’ve managed to find a ready supply of Mrs Ball’s and even secured tastes-like-home boerewors. But one product that hasn’t made it across the Atlantic is the Red Cappuccino. So I’ve been asking friends back home for help. Among them GG Alcock, author of the autobiographical “Third World Child: Born White, Zulu Bred” and the more recent “KasiNomics”. His response delivered much far more than I bargained for, opening up entire highways of fresh entrepreneurial inquiry.
GG wrote: “I can arrange you mqombothi beer ingredients, sorghum harvested and crushed by hand on flat grinding stones in the tribal lands near Bergville. I can arrange the best Durban Poison, picked by hand in the sweaty arid Tugela Valley by topless maidens. I can arrange Zulu goats, fat from nibbling on acacia and tamboti leaves in the thick scrub of Mchunu tribal land. I can arrange a kota dripping with atchar and layered with polony and slap chips from Palesa’s container in Zola, Soweto. I can arrange umabonakude, the green bark of the fever tree, infused with eel oil chopped fresh on the flat sandy coastal plain of Umhlabauyalingana used to ensure success in getting a job.
“I could probably with a little effort and assistance from some of my Soweto dodgy pals or some Nigeria “export” connections in Yeoville to get all of the above to London. BUT Red Cappuccinos. Angazi. This mlungu is stumped. I would hazard a guess though that deep down you Saffers in London miss Durban Poison, goat stew & pap, mqombothi or a non banting kota more than Red Cappuccino? Plus the eel oil in umabonakude will surely make Brexit easier 😉 As for London maybe I can deliver the above goods in person?”
Thanks GG. Perhaps you can pack a homesick pill too?
