Bunny Chow?

On the flight from Dakar, Marcus started watching one of the in-flight movies, Bunny Chow, which featured a prominent food in South Africa called bunny chow. Bunny chow is half of a loaf of bread with the insides carved out that is filled with some kind of meat or bean mix. For lunch we went to a halal Indian food stand on the boardwalk and Marcus ordered Bunny Chow. His bread was covered in curry chicken. He asked the woman in the stand where the name Bunny Chow was derived from – she said she didn’t know but the food was popular in Durban. He asked the Indian girl in the Internet café if she knew where the name came from and she laughed and said, “ You should ask the lady at the stand.”

On the ride to Grahamstown, Marcus asked Jill if she knew where the term Bunny Chow came from, and of course she did. She was also the only person we met today willing to share. “Bunny Chow, I believe, came from the time of apartheid. Blacks could not eat in restaurants, so the restaurants created bunny chow, where they take out the center of the bread and drop the food inside. It was a way to sell food to blacks that was cheap and easy. My boys were big surfers and they would often eat bunny chow because it was so cheap and easy to get on the beach, many young white people ate it as well because it was so cheap and accessible. But yes I think that’s where it comes from.”

Bunny Chow = Jungle Bunny Food.

Toss them a bag with the meat filled into the bread so they don’t have to eat off our plates and utensils.

It made my stomach turn.

Can you imagine….

“ah yes, what’s the soup of the day?”

“oh sir, we have clam chowder and nigger stew.”

“oh I’ll have the nigger stew, and please give me a plate of crackers while your at it!”

{SIGH}

South Africa feels like a nation stumbling in its shoes because it hasn’t realized its feet are big enough to fill them.