ABSTRACT
The staple food of the BaVenda is porridge, vhuswa, made from maize meal. Maize, for the daily porridge, is prepared by the women at the expense of much time and labour. The grain is slightly moistened and then stamped with wooden stampers in a hollowed block of wood sunk in the kitchen or yard. Beer, halwa, is consumed in enormous quantities in times of plenty, doing service as both food and drink to the average MuVenda. Tobacco has been grown by the BaVenda for the manufacture of snuff, fhola, and was never smoked. Snuff is used freely by everybody after puberty, and is either inhaled up the nose or put between the lower lip and the front teeth. Hemp is smoked, but not very extensively. The Venda pipe consists of an ox-horn partly filled with water, into the mouth of which is placed a hollow reed attached to a clay or stone pipe-bowl.
