A Home-Hosted Meal in Chinotimba

Chinotimba is one of the townships of Victoria Falls town, a neighbourhood of family homes a short drive from the hotels. A family there opens their home to you for a meal, and for three hours you are a guest at their table rather than a visitor passing through.

The food is Zimbabwean home cooking, made by people who eat it every day. Sadza comes first, the stiff maize-meal staple you know as ugali, with a stew of beef or chicken, or rice if you would rather. There is kapenta, the small dried fish from Lake Kariba, which anyone who grew up on omena will recognise at once.

Alongside them come kale, which Nairobi calls sukuma wiki, and pumpkin leaves cooked down, with potatoes from the grill and a salad. For anyone who does not eat meat, soya usually stands in for the stew.

Then the dish people talk about afterwards: mopane worms, the caterpillars of a moth that feeds on the mopane tree, dried and then fried or stewed. They are an ordinary and valued food across the region, high in protein, and nobody minds if you try one and leave the rest. Try one. Wash it down with Mazoe, the orange cordial that is as Zimbabwean as anything on the table; tea and whatever fruit is in season come at the end.

The food is half of it. The rest is sitting at someone’s table and talking: about the town, about work and school and family, about how they cook, and, because questions go both ways, about where you come from and what you eat there. Sadza is eaten with the right hand, rolled and dipped, and someone will show you how, though a Kenyan will not need showing. It goes at the family’s pace, and the conversation goes wherever the table takes it.

Lunch leaves the afternoon free and suits a family with young children; dinner runs into the evening. It is the quiet counterpart to the Boma: one family, one table, no stage. It sits well on the same day as the guided walk.

Good to know

• Tell us about allergies and diets when we book. The family cooks for you, so they need to know in advance.
• It is someone’s home. Ask before taking photographs of people or inside the house.
• Dress as you would for lunch with a friend’s parents.
• The short transfer to Chinotimba is part of the visit. We confirm the pick-up time.
• Come with a few questions. The conversation is the point.