A Smiley in South Africa

Dripping murky juices onto the newspaper that held it, our smiley crackled like the fire it had just been pulled from. A sheep’s head that has been split down the center and barbequed, a “smiley” is a local favorite in the Guguletu Township outside of Cape Town, South Africa. With teeth still in tact and a charred tongue drooping down, it was ironically anything but a friendly face and yet, it was going on my plate.
How did I get here? Growing up, I was a food snob. On beach vacations as a child, I ordered chicken at fancy seafood restaurants. Sophomore year, as friends happily sucked down sautéed snails on our cruise ship, I opted for the less adventurous pasta. There is no reason on earth that I would dare eat a sheep’s head. No reason, until South Africa. Walking down the street towards the outdoor food vendors that day, people had stared at us. A group of white American college students, we stood out among the clusters of locals that stood in the sandy street to watch us pass by. With a long history of racial tension, South Africa is still recovering from more than 40 years of apartheid that ended in 1994. Literally translated as “the state of being apart”, the apartheid was an era of segregation, uneasiness and heartache in Cape Town. As much of the black population was forced to move out of the city center, people began to settle in the outskirts of town and form townships. Today, despite changed laws and the hard work of leaders like Nelson Mandela, the city remains largely segregated and the surrounding townships have a stigma of being violent, dangerous places. How did I get here? Staring down at the open-eyed creature on my tray, I felt a little queasy. Though thoroughly cooked in a large, black barrel on the street, the smiley looked suspiciously like a fake rubber toy. Despite my squeamish culinary past, however, I took a bite. Robert Monroe once said that there are many adventures we miss just because we’re waiting to think of a plan. “To find them,” he says, “look for tiny interesting choices.” I would have never pictured myself eating a smiley or venturing out of touristy streets into the Guguletu Township and maybe that’s the lesson I learned while in South Africa. When we find ourselves questioning how we got into a situation, maybe we should instead start looking for the next interesting choice. Therein might lie our next big adventure.