Genealogical Artifact

Statement: When considering an object or artifact that has held a significant place in my life, an item of food comes to mind. This food is a traditional South African delicacy. It is a sausage that has caused a great deal of excitement in my family for as long as I can remember. Apart from simply exciting my family's tastebuds, it helped finance our immigration and immunization into the United States. My family handcrafts the sausage from the finest local meats and fresh ground spices. It is called Boere Worse. It means farmer's sausage, and the process of making to eating, is an incredibly sensuous experience. It stands for my family's commitment to be in the United States, as well as a reminder of where we came. It is very much a root and a branch, functioning as one. When writing my essay I was inspired by another essay written by Tony Judt entitled "Food". It is a short piece found in his memoir, The Memory Chalet. Just as Tony was aided in finding his identity through the food he ate, I feel a strong connection to my family and myself through this linked sausage. Similarly to Siri Hustvedt's description of utilizing a set of useless, unknown keys left behind by her father, I too have found that taking a bite of Boere Worse grounds me in a way that promotes clear and creative thinking. Maybe even a bit of euphoria.

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The whole house smells strongly of coriander and malt vinegar. My mouth is watering as I lay on the top bunk. I know my dad is in the kitchen cutting meat with mom’s ‘sharp’ knife, the one that we mustn’t touch because we could get hurt. He is standing beside the round table that can fold out to be bigger when we have guests. I know he is still there cutting meat and stirring it into all the vinegar because I haven’t heard the terrible machine start yet, just the small noise of my mom grinding fresh coriander for the sausage.
I start to drift to sleep when I hear the terrible noise start. A hellish racket fills the house and makes me rollover in my bed. My brother below also shifts in his sleep. The machine screeches and hums and whines as my parents feed meat into it’s top. I know that’s what they are doing because sometimes they let us help. Tonight they said it was too late since I was starting school in the morning. I try to sleep. The noise is too loud and the smell makes me too impatient.

I climb down from my bunk and creep into the kitchen to watch all the racket. My parents are both standing on the yellow linoleum floor. Beside my dad is a big black bucket filled with meat. He reaches his big hands into the bucket and pulls out piles of oatmeal and spice covered pork and beef. He puts the meat into the top of the screeching machine and then pushes it down through a hole with the wooden pusher. That is my favorite job: to push the meat in with the wooden thing.  Mom is sitting at the table guiding the grinded meat into pork casing. It looks so gross the way the meat fills the thin white tube and turns it red as it expands. I just stand there and watch them, no longer trying to hide. Soon my dad tells me to come stand on a chair at the table and help if I want. I quickly mount the chair and help my dad push meat through the top of the machine. The meat is cold and wet, and squishes if I squeeze it in my hands. It’s covered in special spices so it also feels powdery and clumpy like a sucker that falls out of your mouth and into the dirt. It smells delicious, and I start slipping a small piece of it into my mouth until I remember that the meat is raw and mom says it will make me sick.

I help for a little while but my eyes start getting blurry, so I get off the chair and head for bed. My mom quickly tells me to wash my blood covered hands before returning to my room. The blood had dried there with flakes of oatmeal and I had forgotten. She talks quietly about using soap and somehow I still hear her over the noise of the meat grinder.

My parents have been making sausage for as long as I can remember. It’s called Boerewors, you say it like boravorse, but either way I say it, none of the other kids I know have ever heard of it. It’s from South Africa like us, and my dad makes the best in the whole country. South Africans from all over come to buy from us. I start drifting to sleep even though the screeching and grinding seem to never stop.