I really appreciate when people from home have a good grasp of some of the differences between life here and life in the United States. I got an e-mail tonight from a friend of mine who quoted a statistic she’d read, which I’m sure would be just as accurate if changed to Ecuador: “In Costa Rica the average family consumes less meat than the average house cat eats in the United States.” Among other things, my friend went on to note how funny it was to think of me eating less meat than Sophie (my cat). At one point in time, I’d probably have ranted about that being incredibly sad as opposed to funny. Now, I’m still telling you that that statistic is sad, but I’ll admit anyway that the image itself is pretty funny as well, mostly because of some of my experiences.
There are several times that I can think of at which I’m 100% sure my cat was consuming more meat than me for weekends or weeks at a time because of the places where I was serving. In fact, for good chunks of time while I was living with an Ecuadorian family, there were probably even longer stretches than that.
When the Quito Quest interns helped put on a Vacation Bible School for Huaorani kids in the jungle community of Toñampare in June 2008, I can’t begin to explain to you how excited we were at the rare meals where we had eggs. Those were the main source of protein that went into our meals that week, and the only time we ate any meat for those seven days (eight days for some of us) were the totally random parts of chicken we might be lucky enough to get in our soup. Jerry kept getting heads and talons and odd organs (see this recent related post by my friend Dana), and the poor guy probably didn’t actually consume any of that chicken.
The difference between us and the Huaorani was that Chet Williams had several bags of beef jerky that he’d dole out to the guys every couple of nights after our devotions and debrief (and after the girls had left… we totally didn’t tell them either). More than just having “man time” with a comfort food (I can see my mom cringing at my description of beef jerky as “comfort food”), we were giving our bodies something closer to the level of those specific nutrients that they were used to, and our brains the reassurance of consuming (something that was vaguely) meat.
Even in situations that aren’t as extreme and isolated as an indigenous community that lives 30 minutes into the jungle by airplane, things are certainly different here on the food front. Let’s say that you are a single mother who makes just a few hundred dollars a month and has five kids, with no husband/dad in the picture. That’s a very typical family situation here. And in that situation, you end up eating a lot of rice and a lot of eggs. After you pay your rent and clothe your kids, those are cheap ways to get full and get protein, respectively.
Eating with Ecuadorian church communities and/or families, I’ve caught myself thinking on several occasions “Where’s the main course here?” and realizing that despite there being a large amount of food in front of me, I wasn’t thinking of it as a complete meal because there was no chicken, beef, or pork. And it took me until even writing this very paragraph to realize how cultural that is. The same way that Ecuadorians don’t consider a sandwich a meal (there is no fork involved, thus it doesn’t count), my own conceptions about what constitutes a meal come from my personal cultural background.
In fact, if I manage to wake up early enough in the morning to make it to Guajalo at a reasonable hour for breakfast, I’m going to make French Toast for Lourdes and her family (apparently Carrie did this and it made quite an impression, and they’ve been begging me for about a week to repeat the experience). I’m intentionally not going to buy bacon on the way just as a reminder to myself about my own unintentional cultural prejudices, about the need here, and about how good I have it. I’m not telling you that to sound all noble or anything (insert sarcasm: “really, you’re not going to make bacon for one breakfast?”). I’m just saying it’s nice to have those reminders sometimes.
But I’ll be thinking about Sophie chowing down on her Tender Bites back home.
Ba ha ha. First of all I love how you said some of us were there for 8 days. Classic. And you little sneaks with your stash of beef jerky!!!! Do your chickens have large talons? Love your bloggy mc blog o danny!