I bought a small piece of liver today for supper, with some bacon. I don't like liver that much, but its supposed to be 'good for me' ! When I lived near Kisumu, I used to occasionally buy cows liver and make pate, which I do like, and cooking my liver and bacon for my meal I was reminded of the first time I bought Kenyan liver.
One day I cycled the three or four miles to the nearest market, on a Friday, when they killed that weeks cow, right there, in the market butchery. I had an arrangement with the butcher to keep the fillet steak for me, as this was the least tough beef. Sometimes it was necessary to go elsewhere in the market and buy the cabbage and bananas first, if they hadn't finished killing the cow ! (It doesn't do to be too squeamish in Africa).
On that particular day I saw the butcher had some liver on his stall (open air, flies included) so I bought half a kilo as well as the fillet. I made some more purchases and then cycled back to our house, to get the meat into the (paraffin powered) fridge before it started to walk back home by itself ! Because of poor refridgeration we had to eat any fresh meat that day or the next.
Early next morning I went to make the pate, and in cutting up the liver, and removing the big tubes, I noticed some white things inside the tubes .... being married then to a biologist, I recognized the 'things' as liver flukes ! What to do ? I wasn't going to waste the chance to make some pate, and there would be no more fresh meat for a week .... so I cut the liver up small, and ran a thumb nail along each tube to eject the flukes ! I think there were something like 20 or 30 of them by the time I was happy there were no more. I dumped them on the cement path outside and stamped on them to kill them .... and got on with making the pate, which was delicious !
It doesn't do to be too squeamish in Africa ....
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