In EBF (Vacation Bible School), we ran out of crackers for the kids. Running out of crackers, that’s a novel concept… I don’t know that I felt sad but I certainly felt something. I come from cracker-land, land of plenty. Here, round tummies protrude from their little bodies of malnutrition. We eat buckets of chicken. We supersize. We throw away leftovers. We have gallons of ice cream!
I don’t think I could ever eat an entire package of crackers in one sitting anymore. The true test will come when I’m home with a box of Wheat Thins, a year or two from now.
People are funny – I am funny. The first night in this village, Castelo Branco, I felt horrible that we were eating a second “real” dinner, after I saw one of the villagers watching us, as he picked up something from the boat. The second day, I gladly ate it. The third day, I expected it. The last day, I didn’t think anything of it.
The food in the villages is limited but they saved up for this bi-annual conference and gave us the best of everything (except for the third and last village, Nazaré do Cubate, who didn’t treat us as well). Breakfast consists of a combination of coffee, a hot chocolate or kool-aid sort of drink, some tapioca, crackers, really hard bread and/or popcorn. Breakfast was my favorite meal of the three because I could just eat some popcorn. For lunch and dinner, every village had fish and sometimes had alligator, monkey, chicken, some kind of rainforest pig, and something like a large rodent, called paca. I tasted everything at least once. Alligator was pretty good. Monkey tasted like dirt in meat form. They also have farinha and bejú, hard flat bread made out of the farinha, at every meal, which is alright. And they often have some combination of rice, beans and noodles.
I stopped getting a cup, because then they would give me their drinks. I tried one of their various types of mingau (porridge) and thought I would throw up. But most others drank the mingau okay. I realized how precious drinking water is. Since we would get sick if we drank the river water, we drank boiled water from a stream, lime juice or coconut water most of the time. Sometimes some of the seminary student sisters made things like avocado shake, which is delicious.
Some people handled the food really well – 목사님 (aka Pastor Kim) of course since he’s eaten this food for nearly 2 decades – as well as others. 10 year-old Daniel ate a whole monkey head by himself, except for the brain, which he shared. Fish was fine but after a few days, I didn’t even want to eat that because I was sick of the smell.
They don’t really have any vegetables here but do have fruits. Their banana is sweeter and smaller than what I usually have in the States and pineapple is great, as it is anywhere. The seminary students regularly cut up sugar cane and coconut for all of us and that’s fun to eat. Other than that, I tried some other Amazonian fruits, which are so-so, and some, extremely sour.
I also tried one very crunchy ant, which is bigger than the ants you usually see. It didn’t really taste like anything and felt sort of like I was eating barley. We watched a video of Sam eating a gigantic live ant at a village from a previous trip – they tear off the head before they eat it. It really was humongous for an ant. I don’t know if I would have the guts to eat a live ant that’s about the size of those giant cockroaches.
Meal times seem to be a communal event, where everyone gathers in one place, with their own cups and buckets. Servers come around and pour a bit of the food in each person’s bowl, which they put on the ground, by their feet. I wish I could have eaten the food more heartily but I kept thinking about how unsanitary the food must be, even if it tasted okay. But I am really thankful that the villagers prepared their best for us – too bad I couldn’t show it in the way I ate.
We were not allowed to leave any food because that would be extremely offensive, in a place where food is so precious.
I would post some pictures but the internet here is extremely slow so I can’t. Later, when I’m in Sao Paulo, I’ll put up photos.
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