Kwame Holloway

Seswaa: Botswana's Beloved Pounded Beef

There is a sound that echoes through the cattle posts and family compounds of Botswana on Sundays and holidays alike — the rhythmic, hollow thud of wooden pestles striking softened meat in a great black pot. This is the sound of seswaa being made, a ritual as old as the nation's cattle culture itself, and one that announces, more surely than any calendar, that something worth gathering for is about to happen.