Please make me a decent sandwich, Mom
During my senior primary school days at Wozanazo in the early ’80s, uMntwana wakwaPhindangene, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, decreed that all schools in the KwaZulu Bantustan should provide at least one meal per child during school hours. One day it would be samp and beans, and the next soup and a thick slice of bread.
Typical of the “upper classes” of society comprising teachers, nurses and cops, some of the parents turned up their noses at the suggestion that their children would stand in a queue to beg for soup like Oliver Twist.
And this is how the Sandwich Gang at Wozanazo Higher Primary School was born. While the spawn of the proletariat was lining up for soup, the uppity sandwich chattering classes gathered to munch on Melrose cheese sandwiches and whatnot.
I do not know who authored the Acceptable Sandwich Guidelines handbook, but from what I can remember, the acceptable sandwich fillers in 1983 were cheese-and-tomato, “American” polony or fried egg and cheese.
I was part of a gang of four that participated in a sandwich bartering system that ensured that all of us ended up with four different sandwich halves at lunchtime.
Man, it was a lot of pressure on the shoulders of a bunch of 12-yearolds! When 12.30 struck, you’d approach your school rucksack with trepidation, hands shaking and fingers crossed, invoking the patron saint of decent sandwiches, St Lawrence of Rome, to intercede on your behalf so that mom had packed a sandwich that wouldn’t make you Tuesday’s laughing stock.
I must confess that I have what the boys in the hood would call a “gangsta mom”. She hardly ever let me down. But no-one is infallible. There were days when my sandwich posse, comprising Sifiso, Phewa and Chule, would produce ham and cheese, bacon and egg, fried polony and tomato, and in my “scuff tin” — horror of horrors: Marmite sandwiches. Moooom!!!
With 12-year-olds there are no awkward silences. Just constant jibes for 45 minutes. “So, you seriously brought Marmite sandwiches?” Still, Marmite wasn’t as bad as fish paste. Or peanut butter and jam, a sandwich that made a regular appearance in my lunchbox, about three days before civil servant pay day. We had a name for such sandwiches: isamishi lokuhlupheka (the poverty sandwich). We’d sit there munching on someone’s poverty half-sandwich giggling: “We’re really sorry about the
We’d sit there munching on someone’s poverty halfsandwich giggling: ‘We’re really sorry about the situation at home, man’
situation at home, man.”
Such was the notorious Sandwich Gang of 1983 at Wozanazo Higher Primary, in Hammarsdale. The worst mishap that ever befell us in that grade 7 year is when Chule came with brown, fried cabbage sandwiches to share with the fellows. Yeuch! Don’t get me wrong. Insistent flatulence aside, cabbage is one of my favourite vegetables. That said, Chule’s cabbage sandwich had nothing on the lunchbox of a bigboned, beady-eyed, stingy fellow called Johannes (named after John the Baptist).
I have shared the story of the domesticated cow in my Hammarsdale hood. To cut a very long story short, Mr Mtshali decreed, at some point, that everyone with a lunchbox must declare said lunchbox first thing in the morning and leave the lunchbox on a specific windowsill. This is after Sifiso, one of my Sandwich Gang members, had given a muffled answer after being asked a question in class while he had a sandwich in his mouth. Mr Mtshali insisted that everyone with a lunchbox should declare their sandwich wealth and place it on a specific windowsill, out of reach.
This is when the famous domesticated cow, Joyce, made an unannounced appearance at the window. She inadvertently knocked the lunchbox pyramid over and sent the lunchboxes to the floor. The lid on one of them flung open and two hardboiled eggs escaped and started bouncing around the cement floor.
Mr Mtshali was yelling, “Bambani amaqanda bo!” (Capture those eggs!)
After calm was restored, Mr Mtshali tried to ascertain the owner of the errant eggs. Johannes the Baptist never owned up to his eggs in fear of lunchbox persecution.