You can be a vegetarian in South Africa, but only if you eat lamb, steak, and sausage

Although not a vegetarian, I can imagine being one here is tough and I’ve eaten more meat in the last three weeks than I have in the last few years of my life. One of the other researcher’s father has been around the last week and we’ve done quite a bit of braiing (that’s barbecueing to those Americans out there). Typically you get steak and potatoes with cheese wors (a wurst) as the side salad. Or you get a couple of different type of wors as the appetizer and then lamb chops for the main course. It’s as if the South Africans must keep their cholesterol levels from falling below a certain level. The only vegetables on the menu are the ones that the Americans bring to the dinner table. That said all that meat is darn good. South Africans know their way around a grill and the meat here is fantastic. One of my favorite treats so far is biltong and dry wors which are both variations on what we think of as jerky. Very nicely spiced and it comes in every type of animal you could think of, kudu and gemsbok (both types of antelope), beef, ostrich, etc. The kudu is fantastic. Unfortunately, they are also beautiful, majestic animals – think white-tailed deer face with huge curled horns and beautifully striped coat (See the pic with the post). Allison refuses to eat them.

We’ve secured a nice permanent tent here in Satara that belonged to a now defunked program studying tuberculosis in the buffalo here. It’s quite nice with a wooden floor, nice porch and is surrounded by trees and shrubs (See pic). Have a nice gas-fueled triple burner stove and refrigerator. We typically get visits from honey badgers, mongoose, genets, lots of different birds, hares, tortoise, etc. We go to sleep to the sounds of hyenas calling most nights and hear lions from time to time. Makes for a pretty nice home.

Stay tuned. Next post is about a recent lion capture I went on.