Boma Dinner
Okay so a boma is a livestock enclosure to put it simply. All across the continent, tribes used wood to make circular enclosures that had one opening sometimes with an outer wall of wood in front of the opening to keep predators from seeing inside. However, it serves many other purposes as well such as community and family meeting place, government office and other things. The boma at Moditlo was significantly more built up than a traditional one, with a kitchen, bar, and stone fire pit within it.
The lodge hosted a boma dinner twice while we were there and both were very fun, but the best was the second because by that time, there were a couple more groups of people in the lodge. Appearance was putting on a show with some bongo drums as we walked in giving us nice energetic vibe to the whole experience to start off. The property manager, a South African man named Richard, gave us the boma 101, talking about the history and use of the boma. With a fire burning in the pit, all the different groups at the lodge had their own tables and were presented with a full dining set which we could use the plates to load up our food in a buffet style. My kind of style, even though every meal given to us was more food than I could eat. They had this delicious chickpea soup, roasted veggies, chicken, salsa, and the best dish there, oxtail stew. My goodness was this meat soft and tender. It is definitely up there as one of my favorite meals of the trip.
After we all ate, my mother and I joined the college kids around the fire with Appearance talking, shooting the breeze with our bellies full while we continued sipping on gin and tonics. We all had little bongos and jammed out to some beat Appearance was playing chiming in as best we could. I’m not the most musically talented but I have some skill with a guitar and piano so at the very least I knew how to keep a beat. These college kids did not, at all, which if anything was hilarious to me and Appearance. I miss that woman, always in a good mood.
After finishing my last gin and tonic, most definitely feeling the buzz, we all got escorted back to our rooms where I relaxed with a bath watching some Space Force.
