How do you know a woman has been invited to a braai?
There's a salad.
And it's not a chicken.
Because, apparently, men and women have very different ideas about what is required to feed people around a fire.
For the men:
Meat is meat. And a man must eat.
Meat.
Fire.
Chair.
Beer.
Braai successfully catered.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the kitchen, the women have decided that people may require other food.
So now there are three salads.
A potato bake.
Garlic bread.
A cheese board nobody actually asked for.
Six condiments.
Something in a little bowl that goes with the steak.
Chips and dip because people might get hungry while waiting for the food.
Wine.
G&Ts.
Ice.
Lemon.
And inevitably one woman who announces:
"I just quickly made another salad."
Quickly.
Nothing about that salad was quick.
Eventually everyone eats. The meat is excellent. The salads are demolished. Someone scrapes the last bit of potato bake out of the dish.
And when it's all over?
The men are still sitting exactly where they were four hours ago, discussing the fire as though they've just completed a particularly demanding shift underground.
The women?
Horizontal on the couch.
"I'm not sleeping. I'm watching."
From behind closed eyelids.
Happy almost-Heritage Day, South Africa.
Tomorrow, we braai.