Pickled Fish On Good Friday

When I was a young woman, our reality didn’t allow for a Woolies pickled fish fix. The hustle was real, so with my limited cooking skills, I resorted to barakat by popping in at family in between the three-hour commemorating church service.

The fish aroma was present everywhere in the township, even though we didn’t live by the sea. Our community, too, adopted the fish ritual not only because of religious beliefs, but as a culture. Some reference these ways as our “kullidness”. The pickled fish was ingeniously adopted to allow women to also partake in the three-hour church service, saving hours of labouring in front of the stove and waking to a clean kitchen on Good Friday.

But first, we had to go fishing. This hunting for “good fish” was a dedicated and committed task for someone “wat weet van vis”. The two weeks before Good Friday, there’d be talk about where to go and how to identify a “Good Fish”. The sea remained out of bounds for Pieraks and Jozi-mense, but there was sometimes the entrepreneur who planned in advance and invested in a trip to the Mother City and bought “fresh fish” for our mense. The women in my bloodline frowned on the tips that came with “cheap and bargain”. They knew that these “lucks” could spell long hours at the emergency section of the then Hendrik Verwoerd Hospital.

My later memories of Good Friday fish remain warm and about the holy food message of Jesus’ crucifixion. My mother was the bobaas cook of fish curry with tamarind, thyme and curry leaves, crowning her as the spicy fish curry queen. My cousin Debra brought in the exotic with her paella. Another cousin, Ollie, was the one whose pickled fish ensemble reached many of our homes. Cousin Shirley added rotis and basmati rice to her fish curry, and my granny Katoe was the fish briyani guru. My mother-in-law added her signature fish frikkadel to the table.

See? I never needed Woolies and for many years I convinced myself I didn’t need to cook. Good Friday was not only the chicken’s day off, it was also my day off.

In later years my sisters-in-law added their mama’s komvandaans and we added grilled prawns, prawn curry and seafood curry to the Good Friday fish table. Our interconnectedness we pass onto our children and grandchildren, whether it’s a Woolies fish meal, Ocean Basket or the rituals of hunting and preparing fish.

On days when I couldn’t get to my family for fish barakat, I made do with fish burgers and tuna fish toasted sandwiches from Solly’s and ate on the corner with my girls in Fordsburg. In the underground, smoked snoek sandwiches at times sustained us on this day, even though our detachment went through great pains to hunt for fish under difficult circumstances.

We do this in remembrance of the holiest time in our faith, but also in reverence of our “kullid komvandaan”.