Iguana for Dinner? Um..no, thanks.
Last Friday my host family went to David, where they visited the local mercado.
They promised me that they were bringing back some delicious, ¨cucina typica¨for our dinner that night..
I was pretty excited. Visions of pineapples and coconuts danced in my head all day long. When I finally hiked the long hike home, I was starving. I hadn´t eaten lunch in anticipation of the glorious meal to come.
When I got home, everyone was really excited. They made me walk thru the front door of the house(we usually use the back door)..apparently the surprise was on the back patio.
I walked thru the house to the back patio and looked for dinner. Where was it? I saw nothing that looked like it could be food. There was no enormous pile of glorious fruits, no huge bunch of bananas…
Then I saw them. Two enormous iguanas were tied up to a post. They were tied by their tails, and their legs were broken backwards, and stuck into their backs so they couldn´t move. One, a female, was obviously full of eggs.
Oh my god.
Everyone was pointing and laughing at the poor iguana´s fate, at their trying to escape.
¨Is this dinner?¨, I asked, trying to appear nonplussed, etcetra.
¨Oh yes-and the eggs especially are very good ! We got one with lots of eggs just for you!¨ my host replied.
I took a step back, smiled, said thank you, and excused myself to my room for a moment. I was no longer hungry-the animals broken legs kind of killed my appetite, not to mention their fate.
My real problem was-how to tell them I couldn´t eat the iguana they bought for me? Iguanas here are an endangered, protected animal. Even if I wanted to eat iguana(which I didn´t), I will not eat endangered animals.
How to explain this in a way that is understood by my hosts, without offending them? As I think I have mentioned before, animals are not valued here the way they are in other countries-they are food, or they are things that consume food, of which there is not much. Therefore, their treatment is low on the list of priorities.
Iguana is a typical meat for the Ngobe. They have always eaten it, in particular for special occassions. The fact it is endangered is of no importance-how can it be endangered when they have so many? How can it be endangered when people sell them in the market? And, from their point of view, how can other people tell them not to eat something that they see as theirs?
The other problem was that each iguana cost five american dollars-that´s ten dollars, a small fortune here. It is an honor to be asked to share such an expensive meal.
Catalina, my host, came into my room. She looked worried.
¨You don´t like it? You don´t want it?¨, she said.
¨Oh, I´m sure it is delicious. But I can´t eat it because it is a protected animal. People in my country don´t eat protected animals.¨, I said.
This was not understood at all. They had many questions, such as who decides it is protected? Are they Ngobe? Are they gringoes? Why do the gringoes decide this for us?
Finally I said, ¨Well, it is your custom to eat this animal. But it is not my custom.You can´t break your customs, and so you understand, neither can I.
Why don´t you prepare your animals for dinner and I will make some lentils and rice. I will share my lentils and rice with all of you, but I won´t have any iguana.¨¨
So I went inside, made enough lentils and rice for everyone-while outside, they killed the iguanas, cooked them, and took out all the eggs and cooked those too .
Everyone was happy, because I made the rice my way-brown rice cooked with onions-and they had never had brown rice before, only white rice. I made enough for EVERYONE-which was about 15 people.
This situation really has had me thinking alot about how to decline something that is offered-and frankly, most of the time I am offered something, I don´t decline. However, I have learned alot about cultural differences , and how sometimes…
I just have to say that something is not MY custom.
gg
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