I remember a guy from school. His nick name was “Bouts”, but during “initiation” he was called “Tamma” (which I always assumed was a misspelling of the Khoisan Tsamma, which is a kind of bitter fruit you find in the veld after a rainy season), probably because he was a little rounder than most of us. I digress. In any case, one day I find this guy in the bathroom, attempting to rig a telephone-crank generator to the urinal.
The urinal was porcelain (if it was stainless steel he made have had a chance), so it didn’t work. But the pure malice and ingenuity that went into that… man…
At Technical college we had some lunatics who would cut a small high voltage capacitor’s legs short and parallel and sharpen the tips.
A straw was stuck to it and the cap was charged with a megger.
This was then thrown from the back of the class into some unsuspecting student’s back. The jolt was so great the victim would often yell in pain and then the explanations of who did what to whom were tedious…
yeah there is some debate on what is a Tsama. The kind I’m talking about looks like a small watermelon. The latin name is Citrullus ecirrhosus. The flesh inside is green, and extremely bitter to the taste (although you can apparently cook it).
There is also a kind of wild cucumber, has stickles on the outside. Cucumis africanus. This you can actually eat, taste a bit better, but still not great. Then there is a kind of lightgreen fruit, a “horned melon” which does apparently taste a bit like mushroom, though I have never tried it.
Edit: Aaah, found it. The “Gemsbok cucumber”, Acanthosicyos naudinianus.
No, Maketaan is more yellow in colour, and in some areas it is known as a kaf… excuse me, wilde waatlemoen. You can make jam from Maketaan, but not from Tsamma
Edit: OK, after a but more googling, it seems some people do conflate the two. Where I come from there is Citrullus caffer, which you can make a jam from, and there is Citrullus ecirrhosus, from which you cannot. We call the latter a Tsama.
Oh yes I am well familiar with the “old name”… we were once doing wine tasting with a group at Lanzerac and orders a cheese platter, which also comes with some preserves. Maketaan bits were one of them. One of the group asked the name of it, and someone from at the other side of the table decided it was a good idea to shout the “old name” across the table. Luckily nothing came of it…
Aah I got confused. I was thinking of !Nabas which is the mushroom thing. It grows underground after the rain. You just see a crack in the sand and start to dig. Very nice.
Neeee pok!
