Hospitality 2

Ubuntu
The blood, pooling, refuses to penetrate the baked ground. It crawls along the surface, gathering dust, becoming heavier, thicker, slower. I imagine the viscous glob as a vermilion-black dough that I can knead and then bake velvet drop biscuits, with which I could serve hot chai tea in warm afternoon sun. Those who shed the blood do not die as their blood becomes hospitality evident, an incarnation eclipsing martyrdom.

Gasvyrheid
Rooster koeks are rolls – and you need to roll your Rs hard, too – roasted on an open flame on a grill. What we might also call a barbeque. Irony surfaces as these objects of hospitality are made of white, refined flour, food of the Africaans, the culture that systemized apartheid. But rooster koeks are not discriminatory. They, on all levels, in every place – townships, city, restaurant, home, school – served by all cultures, are bright inclusion. I eat them; I taste ubumbano.

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