Konke ukudla kwakwaNando's bekubaba izolo!

You're getting both a grammar lesson and some culinary detail in this post. Let me break the title down for you: Konke [all, linked to ukudla] ukudla [the food] kwa- [possessive marked, tied to ukudla] -kwa- [locative, indicating "the place of..."] Nando's [fast food chicken shack, ubiquitous in South Africa] bekubaba [was spicy -- recent past progressive tense of "baba," for hot, as in spicy] izolo [yesterday]. So much for the grammar; now, on to the culinary observations: you will all remember that angidli inyama [I don't eat meat], but I was hungry for a snack and walking past Nando's so I opted for a flame-grilled mealie, which is a fancy South African way of saying "corn on the cob." They gave me three options -- mild, medium, hot -- and I was, unfortunately, feeling particularly brave. It's very difficult to explain how brutal and miserable the experience of eating this piece of corn actually was, and even more difficult to explain why I felt compelled to bring the act through to completion. I have since been told that Nando's is (in?)famous for its Portuguese spices, and if that's true I have absolutely nothing good to say about Portugal, its people, or its spices; the sauce in which the corn was smothered added very little to the taste, and its only real purpose seemed to be to sear [in the dictionary sense of "burn or scorch something with an application of intense heat"] one's lips and thereby eliminate any possibility of actually enjoying the meal(ie). If my good friend Tom O. were here in South Africa, I would pay at least 100 rand [which is not really all that much money, at 7-8 rand to the dollar, but then you don't even really need to offer him money -- just dare him to do it and he won't be able to say no] to watch him sweat his way through a flame-grilled mealie. As for me, never again. Hhayi bo, ngeke [Definitely not, never]!