Carnivory

When I left for Tanzania, it had been over eleven years since I willing ate meat. The last few months in Santa Barbara I started practicing eating meat so that if I got into a culturally sensitive situation here I’d be able to do what needs to be done. By the time I left SB, I was choking down single bites of steak and sausage. The first couple of months here when we didn’t have a fridge it was pretty much all beans and rice at home. Then we went out to dinner at a Tanzanian restaurant with friends. The menu was beef, chicken, goat, ugali (a Tanzanian staple- flavorless corn mush), rice, and fried potatoes. I was officially off the wagon. I ordered the beef. I think Brandt may have written about this already, but meat isn’t really prepared the same here. At home, a cow would be butchered into different cuts of meat. In Tanzanian, they just take a big axe and dice up the carcass. It’s served well done in roughly cubed pieces that may contain bone, tendon, rubbery lard, whatever. In fact, the unofficial motto appears to me the tougher to chew, the better. So while I was very proud of myself for tackling the plate of meat on my own (see photo!), I ended up picking through to find the pieces that happened to be only meat and causally shoveled the rest onto Brandt’s plate.

My downward spiral hastened when we moved in with Chris and Cathryn. I think the average South African eats meat 7 times a day, which is impressive considering there are traditionally only 3 meals in a day. Let’s just say there was no need to ask “Where’s the beef?” when it came to dinner. But I did good. I even made a pretty good meatloaf for dinner when it was my turn to cook. Then I went to George’s and his housemate asked me to make sure the stew of chicken livers and other miscellaneous organs didn’t dry out or burn while they played racquetball. Ummm…ok. So I dutifully stirred and added water to the bloody, meaty stew. Fortunately, George realized that one would be over the line for me and didn’t even attempt to serve it to me. Not a problem since there were 3 other forms of meat on the menu. When I left Mwanza, I was running to get back on the old vegetarian wagon. My excursion to the dark side is officially over. Sorry Lynne. I tried. J