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wooden stalls groaned with produce, and the aromas of food, spices, perfumes, and leather
clashed in gastronomic enchantment.
I could have spent hours here. You name it, they had it. From fresh produce to handmade
knives. Bull whips to colorful, wooden souvenirs. And there was meat. Pork and cattle car-
casses hung up on rough, wooden gallows. Poultry, fish, and seafood were on display. The
low price of beef was impressive. How I wished Gavin was here, not only to share this ex-
perience, but to help me carry the several bags of silver side I bought for the beef jerky!
I bought coarse salt, dried coriander, and aniseed herbs to go with the marinade for this
biltong as well as some spare fishing tackle, a lovely, scrimshawed, ivory-handled knife for
Gavin, and an old, army backpack for myself which I used to carry everything back in.
I joined the shopping party who were all jabbering excitedly over paper cups of hot, sweet
coffee, and soon I was chatting along with them, sipping from my own cup of coffee. I cast
a look around and saw the ever present shadow of “professional” women skirting about
on the fringe. I have to admit, there were some absolutely stunning girls who appeared so
young yet so street-wise through hardship and poverty. I just could not imagine living in
this city. Gavin would have been thrilled to bits to see this parade of flaunting, youthful
promiscuity.
Soon, we were escorted back to our bus. We bid a fond farewell to our guard, pressing
a healthy tip in his free hand, and drove off to the waiting ferry, whose big, grumbling
engines in the hold below threw boiling, exhaust bubbles out from the greasy waterline.
The rolling gangway was wheeled off and we roared away in a cloud of fumes, spray, and
seagulls.
Gavin rowed over to pick me up and as usual the familiar question of “Oh, are you guys
twins?” rang out from one of the party. We headed back to Déjà vu as I described the day
to Gavin. He was delighted with the knife and the fishing tackle.
We had to get on with the making of the beef jerky before all the meat spoiled in this heat.
The boat was turned into a butchery for the next few days. Every available surface was
covered in plates, bowls, pots, and pans of marinating strips of silver side beef. In the mar-
inade I had included a large quantity of the coarse salt, as this was the main preservative.
I then added the coriander and aniseed for flavor as well as some grape vinegar and let the
meat soak this all in for the remainder of the day. The following morning, we removed the
beef strips from the marinade and rolled them in a dry mixture of the salt and herbs, in-
serting the little, copper wire hooks we had made from scrap wire. We hung all this beef
out in the sun on ropes strung between the mast and stays. To keep the flies off we draped
some strips of old, mosquito netting over the meat. These flies had caught wind of our tasty
beef the day before and were a constant nuisance. The drying meat was thick with them;
