Regular Meat

Pretty much my entire life I have had particular eating habits.  Mine started in High School where in the middle of Country Biscuits’ & Gravy, Oklahoma when I decided to cut out beef and pork.  My Grandmother wrung her hands in distraught, worried about her granddaughter becoming anorexic while oblivious that her daughter was doing fine eating a chicken wing.  Throughout time my taste buds grew expanding in its choices (brown rice, eggplant, fried green tomatoes) and depleting some unappealing tastes to my body and soul (mushrooms, olives, anything gross).  By age thirty I pretty much know what I like and don’t like.

I’ve done most of the stuff, even to the point I went straight vegetarian for two weeks, raw food diet for three days, eliminated cheese and bread for three months.  I managed a lifestyle of no beef, chicken, pork, for a year using the only meat dish as seafood.  I recently picked up chicken during the summer but I can definitely say I have kept true to my no pork, no beef lifestyle…not because of a Koran or a Black Jesus, but because that is what I like…a no oink, no moo diet. 

I knew that moving to a new culture and new continent would be a challenge but I was counting on the history of our black folk to be solid in one universal fact….chicken.  So ten days in Liberia and I am doing fine.  Not a problem in sight.  My home girl is helping me interpret foods and figure things out.  It is this one day that I am eating a spinach based cuisine that I encounter my first problem.  I chomp around the chicken bone, taste a little fish, and then…is that a nail?  I question my friend, nicely in my ignorant, naïve American way…”Hey girl, hey what is this…a herb or something?”  She looks without second thought and tells me it is a pig’s foot. I am beyond shocked and appalled, a damn pig foot?  Better yet I told her I didn’t eat pork.  So when she asks me what is the problem, I politely reminded her, “Hey, remember that whole I don’t eat pork thing.  I don’t eat it and I didn’t want to be rude and eat around this man’s dish.”  She looks at me without skipping a beat and tells me that I wasn’t eating pork.  Nope, that was a pig’s foot; pork is the other part of the pig where bacon, ham, and sausage comes from.  Nope, a pig’s foot is foot not pork and not a restriction to my eating regimen.

It’s then she lost her job as my friendly chef friend. 

Well, the next day I tell my driver the story and he promises that he will help me out.  I make him repeat, NO BEEF, NO PORK…NO COW, NO PIG.  He does it well, even with a little rhythm to it.  Then I change it up only slightly…ONLY FISH, ONLY CHICKEN….ONLY FISH, ONLY CHICKEN.   Not a problem, he brings me bitter balls (I know the name) which is another Liberian dish.  I dig around, I see chicken I see fish, great I can dig into the culture.  And I am eating happily until at the bottom is a bone I never recognized before.  Now during my brief little stints in biology and zoology and my many years eating I can recognize the joints of a chicken and a fish, but this is not a joint that I can recognize. I even take it out of the bowl and complete a CSI investigation.  Nope, no identity.  So, I call my friend back in who has a friend with him and we go over the rules again.  When I point out the bone, he tells me “That’s not pig or cow.” 

“Well, what is it?”

“That is regular meat.”

“Regular?”

“Yeah, regular.” To this his friend nods.  I gasp.  What the mess is REGULAR meat.  Pretty much every meat I knew had a name, even if I didn’t want to touch it.  Dog—Meat, Snake—Meat, Alligator—Meat, Horse—Meat, Monkey—Meat…where does REGULAR meat fall?  I don’t know a REGULAR meat. 

I pull away from the food…determined to eat sandwiches for the duration of my tenure here, or more importantly SHOP MYSELF, when I get the cultural awareness lecture.  My friend sits down next to me with his African accent thick, laced in wisdom and talks how friends share and a story about how in one’s home we sometimes sacrifice to bring comfort to the situation and bottom line was in Liberia…do as Liberians do.  And I was moved…slightly touched until I remembered…When I was in America; I didn’t do as American’s did, and I am American.

We have the highest obesity, sugar glucose, diabetes, and all kind of other food related disorders.  I didn’t eat pork and beef and those are “American” dishes.  There was a lot of stuff I said no too, despite Thanksgiving dinners or Christmas tells.  Hell, I insulted American culture if I totally believe his parable and would be cruising with an IV hanging from my blue vein, talking about a bad thyroid gland.  The cultural gratuity session had to cease.  This ain’t a moving moment when one hand shakes another, a sista is HUNGRY and I don’t compromise on my stomach. No negotiations or compromise scenario, I need a bailout!  My stomach doesn’t represent a nation, a culture, a country, or a city.  It represents me and my preferences and it chooses, I choose, WE choose together to only wrap my mouth around a fish or piece of chicken UNLESS I choose to do otherwise.

The next day I got shrimp fried rice….and no more REGULAR meat.

The Most Important International  Awareness Class Ever

I remember being in college and watching the School of Business students running quick to the classes of destination.  Maybe it was because we were at FAMU, or maybe it is the call of the SBI building, but whatever the notion…business students were a big deal.  They were bombarded with opportunities and internships that we lowly Liberal Arts majors would sell our last Top Ramen Noodle box for.  This prestigious behavior followed them in organizations, conversations, and even dress code.  More or less, it is understandable that in order to train this elite group of students, they had special courses and recommendations for education that the rest of us never received.  Kind of like a fraternity meeting, you never knew what was brewing behind the doors of the SBI meeting and would never know until you see a friend of yours cross the burning sands in a pressed three piece suit.

With all their training, I can guarantee you there was one course that was never transcribe to them that would bridge them to be prepared to work anywhere in the world.  It was this class that I had the pleasure of partaking in that is the factor and understanding of me knowing that I can work anywhere in the world.  Anywhere.  This precious class is not a foreign language or even sociology class.  It is quite simply….Camp Leadership. 

Yes the football jocks have it!  This is an elective class that most jocks throw into the mix between basket weaving and the philosophy of sports.  Camp Leadership, although not on my FAMU transcript, one of the classes I took under direction of my pioneer mother.  In Camp Leadership, you had to learn first aid survival techniques in the absence of technology (camping…hence…woods).  You also learn to navigate, talk to others and work in a team, and the most important aspect in my mother’s opinion.  Survive a weekend in the wilderness as a normal human being, not using any resources that have been created in the past 15 years. 

Yes, this class that taught me to bath out of a bucket, brush teeth with a finger, store food, fish, light a fire, and so many more objects that is the saving grace of why I know I will live fine in Liberia.  It’s neither that bad nor detrimental.  There are a lot of things out here that wouldn’t even serve a justice as a chapter in a Camp Leadership class.  But that schooling taught me how to survive and to get rid of the attitude of negativity and adapt an understanding of survival.  Our necessities in America are truly luxuries in other worlds, and a belief of mine that we are living so luxurious we are creating a fat beast that will die of gluttony (but that is another blog).   It is here that when I was presented with the fact that we didn’t have enough money for a hot water generator that I shrugged my shoulders and started boiling water.  We lose electricity at 8:30 am everyday because we are on a generator and it’s too costly to run it during the work hours, it is fine with me because I am ready by 8:15.  I piss in a toilet that doesn’t flush…you throw water down it and watch the manual process work, yet I am happy there is plumbing.