Poikiekos recipe on a Botswana farm

.

Hey, hot are the days in Botswana!!! Especially for us, who did not grow up under its searing sun to get used, bare skinned except for the red string against the witchcrafts that mothers tie around the waist of little kids. One such little boy, Kaone, is always with us, listening to our language that he eventually came to understand.

.

With the patience of one who knew what he wants, Simi encouraged the friendship between his white meat chicken with the local Tswana chicken, good for laying eggs. Simi always had some prized cocks he used to further the friendship between the two races.He has now his own brand of chicken, quite famous around Gaborone that he sells for ten times the price of the usual. They are proudly big of stature and colourful, good layers and meaty. They are very smart chicken I have to admit. They are also the local python's favorites. His cocks are bought by locals for improving their own stock except when a sneaky python gets hold of them before. I never knew how came that the pythons always knew to choose the best cock Simi had, the proudest, the biggest, the strongest.

.

Simi had also and looked well after the fat chicken, the fat goats. Only the dogs were not fat and occasionally some mischievous python snake that was punished for eating one or other of his prized animals was kep on a strict diet with nothing to eat, locked up in an empty dwelling.. Simi used to be very angry with those bad snakes and there were moments when the snake's life hanged in a balance as our Chinese friend, Mr. Hu, was always ready to apply the ultimate punishment on it and eat it with his Chinese friends. Maybe the law prohibiting the killing of pythons in Botswana played also a role in Simi's good forgiving heart. Enough to remember that I never managed to get that bite of snake that I was hoping for during those years, as Mr Hue promised he would give me if%u2026%u2026%u2026%u2026
Pythons have never given up on Simi's fat little animals, they always try their luck again and again. There is no justice in the fact that the Botswana law does not provide for fair punishment when pythons offend the farmer and eat up his animals.

.

The evening in Botswana comes early and suddenly and we all remember the poikie kos, like hungry lions and all that we are after a day on the farm.
When Simi says uhh, it's late, we all jump into action and quickly clean the vegetables that must be added in the pot. They can not be peeled and cleaned before as they would dry, oxidize and loose precious nutrients because of the day's heat.
Now in go into the poikie pot all the vegetables, placed in layers on top of the meat: the carrots, the potatoes first, the butternut cuts, as they are the hardest, further on top of them the layer of the baby marrows and all the other vegetables that are available. Garlic, salt, more pepper, curry powder or any other preferred spice is added now. Attention returning to the poikie kos, we are all suddenly chefs.

From this moment, the lid must be put on and no one can stir into the pot.
It is still a wait.
In a halogen cooker the food would be long done, but no one is missing the modern device.

.

40 minutes later will find us prepared, hands washed and seated, the poikiekos ready. Once the lid is lifted, we can dish. We all eat and there is quiet and peace in the warm dark. The sounds of surrounding nature are the only music . We could feel that happiness is there, for everybody, because God loves us all.

We used to sit in the evenings in the boma and watch the stars and talk small under the velvety deep purple sky of Botswana. The stars that we saw were different from the stars we used to see back home but we were all happy as the South African wines are very good indeed and the poikiekos tasty.