Meet Your Meat

Before I go any further with this post, I want to warn you all that I am going to be talking about some of the culinary adventures I had this past week. These adventures involve some of the less appetizing aspects of food production, so if you have a light stomach you may want to proceed with caution. 

A few weeks ago when I came back from fund raising in the US, I asked Jazumen (one of the cooks here) if she could prepare some goat meat for me. I had eaten a little bit of goat before hand, but seeing that it is the national dish of Haiti, I figured that I should have it prepared in an authentic Haitian style. I was more curious than anything, and I figured I would have one good meal before I came back to the US. Jazumen didn’t say anything about it, and I didn’t want to be pushy, so I didn’t ask a second time and figured I’d just have to wait to eat some goat.

I hadn’t thought too much about the goat until yesterday when Jazumen came to my door and wanted to show me the goat she had bought for me. I was a little confused, but I attributed it to my poor language ability. I was thinking, “She wants to show me the goat? Why do I need to see a piece of meat? Maybe it was something else she needed to show me? Maybe she wanted me to ok the cuts of meat she bought?”. It was not a miss in translation, she brought me out to the school yard where there was a living and breathing goat munching on some of the weeds.

When she said “can you see the goat”, I had one of those intuitive “uh-oh” feelings you get when you know something isn’t right but you can’t put your finger on what is wrong. I passed by Edven’s office on the way down and I asked him to come along with me. Edvens would be able to translate everything perfectly, and he is also very good at preventing me from saying something that would be offensive to a Haitian. Sure enough Jazumen brought me to a little goat just hanging out in the school yard, chomping away on a few weeds. I thought that this goat might be for someone to take home, but I then saw that it was a boy, and realized that she had bought it for my dinner. She asked me if I thought it was ok?

At this point I felt confused and a bit guilty, not only was I looking my dinner in the eye, but I had never intended for Jazumen to go to all the trouble of buying an actual living breathing goat for me. I figured she could get a few goat steaks (or whatever cuts of meat goat is sold as) at a supermarket and then cook them up for dinner one night. I know how much trouble it is to buy a goat at the market, and when I go I have a huge truck that I can pile the goat into once I’ve purchased it. She would have probably had to bring the goat back to the mission on a tap-tap. I had never meant for her to do all this for me.

I was also a bit confused, when someone says “how does this goat look?” what do you say in response? Every time I go to a restaurant and order a bottle of wine and the waiter asks me to sample the bouquet, I never have any idea what to taste for. I felt even worse at this point, because wine doesn’t look you in the eye when you check to see if it is ok.

I told Jazumen that I felt badly that she had to go to so much trouble, and she said that she was honored to do this for me. I was a bit confused at first, but after talking with Edvens about it, he said that she was honored that I asked her. It was implying that I had respect for her and her cooking. She was very excited to cook the goat. Jazumen takes great pride in her work, and I think that she my asking her to prepare the goat was a sign that I held her in high regard. She prepared it today and put everything in the freezer. I declined to watch the goat being prepared, though I did catch the pieces of the goat being brought up to the kitchen.

I thought this would be the end of my culinary adventures, but I was wrong. Every few days Jazumen makes me some chicken that I can mix into my rice and beans. Usually she just fries the meat, but today she broiled it and mixed it in with some hot sauce. The chicken was good, though it was much gamier than any chicken I had eaten before. I soon realized that what Jazumen had cooked me was rooster. Rooster meat is much gamier than hen meat and is much tougher to eat. Rooster meat almost tastes like quail or game hen. We don’t eat it in the US because its not as tender and juicy as chicken meat. I didn’t mind it, but I thought it was a rather appropriate way to finish one of the more bizarre culinary experiences of my life.

This whole experience did make me think how lucky we are in the US to have the food that we have. Most Haitians don’t eat very much meat and many are protein deficient because of it. Not only is meat more expensive than most food here, but there is no way for the average Haitian to keep meat. Almost no one can afford a refrigerator, and even if they could the electricity is so inconsistent that it wouldn’t do a very good job keeping anything cold and fresh. The Haitians can eat chicken every now and then, and if they go to the city they can eat some of the meat that is sold on the street. There are some people who search out some “alternative” meats. Pastor Pierre has told me about some people who bring alcohol up the mountain and dump it in the holes in the rocks. This some how brings out the lizards who live in the rocks. Once the lizards are out in the open and intoxicated, the people hunting them catch them, kill them, and then eat them. Yet despite these more creative attempts to find meat, most days the average Haitian diet doesn’t include anything but rice, beans, and whatever other small vegetables can be found.

I feel very lucky to be born into the family that I was born into. Not only are my parents wonderful people, but I was born in a country where I don’t have to kill my dinner. Even though I am not very wealthy, I can afford to eat a balanced diet without too much trouble. I don’t have to worry about where my next meal is going to come from, I don’t have to worry about the next time I will be able to eat meat, and I can always rest assured that I will have food to eat. I am going to eat the goat on Tuesday when I can share it with the rest of my friends here, and all I can hope for now is that it tastes good.