My Dearest Lady Polony,
In times of crisis we tend to take refuge in nostalgia, for it is in tender memories of the past that we find comfort. It doesn't matter if that tenderness is, at worst, a false fabrication conjured by a fevered mind, or at best a romantic rendering of that past.
When the Israelites, who'd been freed by Moses from their bondage in Egypt, suddenly found themselves wandering and starving in the arid wilderness, they cried and said even slavery was better than their desert ordeal.
Just hours after it was announced that processed meats should be withdrawn from store shelves because these were suspected of being the main cause of listeriosis, I found myself thinking about you, my dear.
The sweet moments that I'd enjoyed in your company came flooding back, only to be spoilt by so-called jokes told at your expense on social media.
One of them said: "During the reign of Our Father we were swimming in gravy; enter Ramaphosa we can't even eat polony."Ah, the sheer insensitivity of these contumelious nincompoops makes my blood boil. The tears I shed would have shamed Steve Komphela and his Chiefs followers after last weekend's defeat at the hands (or, rather feet) of Orlando Pirates.
I had to cry, bitterly; my relationship with you is deeper than the Nkandla fire pool.
To fully appreciate how long we've known each other, I shall now claw back to the past, grab those tender moments by the ears and shake them vigorously so that they come alive again.
I am glad to remind you that I was first introduced to you by my dear mother, bless her soul, when I was around six in the early 1970s.
At that time my mother worked for a white family as a domestic. She would bring home not only hand-me-down clothes from her employers, but parcels of food and leftovers from their table.
That's how you landed on my lap, so to speak, a leftover from my mom's master's table. You came to me petite, colourful and highly textured - in thin slices.
I jumped for you, my lady, and devoured you. By the time my younger brother said "What is that you're eating?" I was already wiping my lips, a satisfied smirk on my face.
The next time mother brought you home, I was a little more considerate. Being the eldest child, I shared you evenly with my brother.
Partly out of generosity, but partly out of a need to brag, I even took some remainders of you to my friends in the street so that they could see that I was not a simple darkie like them; I was eating polony, ukudla kwabelungu baka ma (food from my mother's white masters).In my neighbourhood the only other people who were familiar with polony were the Malefanes, whose mother worked as a cleaner at a school for white children in Hillcrest.
But when I started school, and my world opened up, and I began to realise that there was in our township streets a lousy pretender, a cheaper version of you, called mamtso, which I later heard being referred to as Shangaan wors in Joburg.
Be that as it may, I was still happy that you, my Lady Polony, were not a common harlot who availed herself of all tongues.
If a person could find polony at a Greek tearoom in Hammarsdale, the industrial area next to our township, it came in thin slices. At 8c a slice it was not cheap, considering that a loaf of bread was 10c, and a tin of pilchards a bit more.
The happiest year in my life was 1977 when my aunt, my mother's elder sister, opened a butchery in the township.
It was at this butchery that I saw you, Lady Polony, in your full glory. While in the past I'd seen you presented in thin slices, at my aunt's butchery you burst onto the scene in the form of buxom roll that reminded me of the healthy thigh of a girl who was my "wife" when we played house.
No, my dear, don't cry now; it's only a silly comparison. God has yet to create something that even remotely approximates your curves and buxomness.
When I saw you in the cold room at my aunt's butchery I stood there sweating, even though the temperature was freezing. So, this is what polony really looks like! You were in red, yellow and blue livery.
I picked you up reverently and took you to the back table where Uncle Jerome taught me how to slice you using that gleaming steel machine.Appropriately, the machine purred as it graciously sliced you; you moaned in return. My love soared.
In days to come I would steal into the cold room. With my knife, I would carve large hunks of you, hide the pieces in my white dustcoat, sneak out of the butchery, and go and hide my loot in a place where I would later collect it.
The following day, I would share my loot with girls at Ilangabini Primary School. Suddenly, I was popular with the girls, who called me umfana kapholoni - polony boy.
In growing up, I lost touch with you. In the maelstrom that is called modernisation, the market was suddenly awash with many pretenders who lacked your pure pink colour, your smooth texture and your delectable taste and aroma.
I stopped looking for you among these fakes, some of which contained pieces of bone and what looked suspiciously like nail clippings!
For a while I flirted with your cousin, Vienna. Ag, but who wants a thin finger when they can have a whole pink thigh!
When I moved to Cape Town, and later to Johannesburg, I was happy to reconnect with you. I realised that you'd insinuated yourself into the diet of ordinary folk.
Though I was envious that the one I had enjoyed by myself was now availing herself to the masses, I was happy that you were bringing joy to so many.Schoolchildren in Cape Town swore by you. They made you the central ingredient of that funky juicy concoction they call a Gatsby.
In Johannesburg, kids enlisted your beauty when they designed ikota. Ikota is a hunk of bread sliced in two and filled with fried chips, tomato sauce, atchar and a slice of polony.
It riled me to see your elegance smothered in this mess. But when I saw the smiles on the faces of children, I swallowed my anger. I prided myself in that I was one of the early discoverers of your purity.
What also made me happy was that you had become highly affordable in the times I was growing up.
A fool would say you got cheapened, but in your defence I would say that you realised, after so many years of soul searching, that you belonged with the masses.
While the madams and baases in the suburbs swooned over sushi and other fashionable flash-in-the-pan snacks, you held your own in the streets.
Unlike sushi, which spoils quickly, you can hold your own for a while. Even without refrigeration, you can keep for days. That's durability, dependability and sheer unpretention right there.
In the privacy of their houses, the madams and baases, when their wallets were empty, always threw themselves into your welcoming arms, or in those of your cousins - the Russians, Viennas and so on.
Over the years you've gained so many admirers that opportunists made a lot of money selling poor imitations of you.It must have been your success that inspired a laboratory wizard to bewitch you. Yes, no prevarications now, no beating about the bush, Polony Has Been Bewitched!
How can a person go to bed healthy and hale, only to wake up the following morning afflicted with something called hysteria, sorry, listeriosis?
They say you've killed people. No, it's the witches who are to blame, not you.
Listen, my valiant one, I shall ask you to rest in this corner of our castle so you can regain your colour and vigour.
You just can't fade into oblivion. If such characterless, tasteless morons as Spam can get honoured in World War 2 movies and books, and still continue to grace the shelves of American stores in the Trump era, we have no business giving up on you.
In the meantime, I'm going to jump on my stallion. With my sword in hand, I'll go and look for an antidote to the witches' medicine.
I shall put to the sword the scoundrels who have besmirched your honour and virtue.
Forever yours,
Count Friedriech von Khumalo, resident knight at Amantungwa Castle, overlooking the Nkandla Compound
SELECT TWEETS
• He said he’d die for me, so I served him polony, on a balcony.
• When you pack your gun don’t forget to pack your Polony too.
• Our ancestors were killed by the British in the quest for a colony and now we’re being killed by the French polony...