Polenta is made from ground maize, and the scene in the book is precisely dated to the early 1480s.
At checkpoints on the outskirts of Harare, policemen waved down vehicles to inspect them for illegal quantities of "mealie-meal" — ground maize, the Zimbabwean national staple.
Normally, I dislike tamal – ground maize – but the tamal en hoja grille relleno de tomate confitado y envuelto en jamón serrano (grilled tamal filled with candied tomato wrapped in cured ham) is great.
We headed straight to the supermarket in Lilongwe and bought four 50kg sacks of ground maize, two 10kg bags of of rice, a sack of carrots, potatoes, salt, sugar, and bottles of beer.
Finally, an image of Huitzilopochtli, made of ground maize (corn), was ceremonially killed with an arrow and divided between the priests and the novices; the young men who ate "Huitzilopochtli's body" were obliged to serve him for one year.
"There is a stigma that if you are a black woman and start losing weight you might be ill, you might have HIV," said Dudu Masooana, a friendly 38-year-old mother of three from Soweto whom I met as she lunched on fried chicken and pap, a traditional porridge made from ground maize.
