Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Food - Fried Bovine Rectum

You don't have to frown or show repulse. After all, where did these eggs you ate at breakfast came through? Answer: the distal portion of the hen's digestive and genital tract, the cloaca where egg shells were in close contact with fecal material, loaded with salmonella, campylobacter and other pathogens.

In some places, there are stores specialized in tripe, a generic term applied to any part of the stomach and intestine. Still, I don't think it will be easy to find the distal portion of bovine intestine - in Southern Peru sometimes they are called "culata", an euphemism, since that word means the handle of a gun. Let's assume you can get some. First, clean it carefully, to remove any remnant of E. coli. Then cut it in open and slice in segments of about three inches. Boil them for two hours and drain. Season with red chili, garlic, cummin, salt and pepper. Fry, turning and making sure both sides are brown. Serve with boiled potatoes and onion rings marinated in oil and vinegar.

I must confess that I have never prepared, or even eaten this dish. Then, why I am recommending it? Because I have enjoyed very similar dishes in popular restaurants, "picanterias", specialized in spicy ethnic food.

From my perspective, a cook has to be really inexperienced and/or dumb to make a bad meal out of a piece of tender meat, and other expensive ingredients (think of trufles, heavy cream, shrimp, cognac). But a cook has to master his art to turn body parts usually discarded (blood, tripe and other entrails such as the heart, animal skin) into tasty dishes. That is what former slaves and the rural poor, forced by neccesity, did in Peru. I take my hat off for them!

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Food - Deep Fried Guinea Pig

When does a bunny or guinea pig constitute a pet and when they are food? It depends on where you are living, your cultural background, and if the critter is hopping on your carpet or defrosting in the kitchen.

In the US you don't buy a guinea pig from the pet store just to cook it. It is illegal and you could be taken to court for cruelty against animals. You can easily get a frozen, ready to cook guinea pig from the Latino supermarket.

Guinea pigs are not pigs, nor are from Guinea. They are rodents -a few scientist doubt these little mammals are even rodents!- and are raised for food in Andean countries, from Ecuador to Bolivia. Since their fat content is low, they are healthy food if stewed. Sadly, since they absorbe a lot of fat when fried, I can hardy classify this recipe as healthy.

If you purchase the carcass ready to cook you do not have to worry about removing the fur. Guinea pigs are not skinned, because you will lose a lot of meat attached to the skin. Instead, after killed, they are briefly submerged in boiling water. The fur will immediately come off.

Some consider that meat flavors are enhanced by letting the disemboweled guinea pig to dry overnight, hanging from a wire to prevent household cats from feasting on it. It's the short-term equivalent to expose game to cool air for several days until meat softens.

Before cooking, season the skin and inside with a paste made with red chili, garlic, pepper and salt. Then powder the guinea pig using corn flour. Put the guinea pig flat in a pan, making sure the oil (at least 1 inch deep) is very hot. Since guinea pigs curl when fried, it is neccesary to put a flat, heavy object on top. Flip the critter and fry the other side until brown and crusty.

Serve with boiled potatoes and salad. Enjoy!

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Going Tribal - Mancillas

"Tribe" is often used as a derogatory term for preliterate, indigenous, non-Western societies, before the development of, or outside of, states. In this blog I am using "tribe" in its ethnographic meaning: a group organized largely on the basis of kinship, sharing common values and way of life, with a strong sense of identity.

Mancillas are my in-laws. My kids like to talk about them, and what makes them special, and can not avoid comparing Mancillas with my own extended family ("B" tribe), trying to get a better understanding of close-knitted, Latino extended families.

The Mancillas, of African-Peruvian descent, live in the Coast. Their diet is comprised by fish, rice, potatoes and vegetables with increased consumption of chicken and processed foods.

Although a growing number has attended college, graduation rate is not high and the proportion practicing their profession is even lower. Mancillas have limited mobility both in geographic and socioeconomic scales. Most have not traveled abroad, some still live in the same household where they were born.

Mancillas have a rich oral communication. Even those abroad communicate several times a week. Using phone cards, they can held long distance calls straight for several hours, literarly.

Mancillas are very religious and attend church regularly. Divorce rate is low. They are not engaged in political parties or political activism whatsoever. Mancillas enjoy music, dance and entertain family and friends and share food.

Mancillas, much as Latino extended families living in the US, pool their resources to pay bills, help their young to reach education, chip their resources to cover the needs of those who are uninsured, old, sick or poor.
Those bearing a disproportionate load seem fatigued, and while still interested in their kin's daily lives, sometimes are either unable or unwilling to continue provide effective assistance.

While family support is useful to cope with difficult life stages (adolescence, loss of a relative, sick, or unemployed), continuous and intensive family involvement may sometimes rob a young person of the opportunity of learning from his/her own mistakes, when they do not have yet dependants, and the consequences of errors -like being fired- are less serious.

Micromanagement inside the extended family may slow the acquisition of essential skills such as financial literacy in home management. Overprotection may castrate initiative and self-reliance. Excesive intrussion in one's private life can be sometimes annoying.

Going Tribal - Pampacocha


When at college, I visited Pampacocha, a small village in the highlands of Peru. The previous year, a group of students had been there during carnival and had felled a tree decorated with laces and small presents, planted in the middle of the town plaza (Yunza). Tradition dictated that those who felled the tree should put one up the next year.

Pampacocha was the place where our Social Sciences professor did ethnographic research on ancient celebrations such as "Moors and Christians", a ceremonial battle between villagers dressed as one or other side. In Spain, where this tradition originated, men prefer to dress as Moors because their costumes are more colorful and imaginative. In Pampacocha, during many years they had accumulated body armor, muskets, swords and many other props. The celebration brought people from all the province.

We arrived to Yaso, the part of the community near to the dirt road, on top of the battered bus- there was no room inside the bus. A man inside the bus looked at me with an angry expression. I had been indiscrete enough to sew a red star in front of my baseball cap, just as a juvenile prank, since our trip had nothing political. My Social Sciences professor -as others will do later- had warned me not to take my leftist beliefs too seriously: "you are inserting yourself in a prestigious career, through the leading Peruvian university, so don't pretend belonging to the proletariat".

That man in the bus-we later found out he was the local representative of the central government- thought we were guerrillas. Soon after we learned that that sub-prefect was planning to send police after us. A quick vote showed the student group was divided about what to do, and some left immediately. Perhaps they had seen the Mexican movie "Canoe" based on a real story: a group of students were wrongly regarded as guerrillas and killed in a village of the same name. Those of us who stayed brought vaccine from the nearby health post (1-day walk) vaccinated the kids, and prepared for the Yunza.

The family that provided us accomodation in their modest, no bathroom home, set up a rodeo to brand their cattle. Rodeo (roundup) started with an offering of cane liquor to the Apus, spirits in the mountains. Then we drank some of that liquor, and smoked cigarettes. Then we chased the calves. I lassoed five of them. Therefore I was awarded the privilege of carrying the lassos back to the household. I have since received several awards, but never as proud as in Pampacocha.

Yunza itself was a little dissapointing. Carnival was a lesser celebration in Pampacocha, with the Yunza as the focus. Couples danced around the decorated tree, hitting the trunk with an ax. Often, during Carnival in the highlands of Peru social rules become lax, and usually modest girls will chase men, and sometimes will have their sexual debut. But none attempted to do so with me.

After three weeks in Pampacocha I departed, loaded with wild flowers and local soft cheese. Ashamed of returning home so dirty, I took a shower in melted snow running downhill.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Going Tribal - Lamistos

Family of the health promoter in Pamashto, in the Amazon basin of Peru. The promoter is a mestizo and his wife a Lamisto (Quechua -speaking) indian

The Financial officer at the University quickly accepted my offer. I would receive a small fund to start a health project in the Huallaga Valley, in the Peruvian Amazon Basin. If I failed to get funding, he would recover in installments all expenses incurred from my meager academic salary.

We immediately started activities in Uchiza, at a time when the leading cause of death among adult men still was firearm injuries, a legacy of times when Shining Path guerillas battled government forces and other subversive groups. Aquilina Palomino, a RN, used an iron-fortified chocolate drink to fight anemia. She had obtained strong community participation and encouraging results in reducing severe anemia.

Initially, the local USAID Mission rejected an unsolicited proposal Aqulina wrote. After Garcia's administration ended, Peru was included again in the list of eligible countries for USAID funding. A US-based nonprofit contacted the School of Public Health where I worked. After a convoluted process, I ended up directing a Child Survival project in the Huallaga Valley that included the control of micronutrient deficiencies as one of the main interventions.

The results of the baseline household survey were puzzling. In one of the provinces, Lamas, less than 1/6 of women were anemic, while the overall rate was over 30%. Less than 10% of Lamisto had taken iron supplements and the local diets provided very little absorbable iron. What was protecting Lamisto women from anemia? while it is true that Lamas is located at a higher altitude, where malaria and hookworm are less common, poverty is worse there (photo at the right shows RN Nancy Garcia interviewing a Lamisto mother in Aviacion).

Cesar Eduardo Wong, a MD student visited Lamas during a summer vacation. The family of the health promoter in Pamashto explained everything to CEW: women consumed metalillo, a clay rich in absorbable iron as we found when submitted this clay for chemical analysis. A teaspoon of metalillo contains as much absorbable iron as 40 hamburgers! Sadly, chemical analysis supported by Luis Seminario (USAID) also found that metalillo has traces of lead that makes it unsuitable for human consumption.

Margarita Huaman, an anthropologist, spent three months doing participatory observation in Pamashto and Lamas. See one of her photos at the right, these kids are eating metalillo from the source. Margarita concluded that most aboriginal women, particularly when pregnant, consumed metalillo, that tastes like roasted peanuts after being heated and smoked. If you are interested in the ethnography of geophagia (technical word for eating dirt), go to Lima's Catholic University and read Margarita's dissertation. Also, watch the documentary my nephew Mario Vildosola Jr. made on geophagia in Lamas.
Lamistos in Pamashto -where tap water is available- still retrieve drinking water from this open well. The white soil layer near the interphase air-water is metalillo.

Lamistos have other tasty treats. When my kids visited Lamas they had fun eating their deep fried ants.

Going Tribal - Cocamillas

I spent three months living with Cocamillas -belonging to the Tupi-Guarani linguistic group- in the Amazon basin of Peru. For my rural internship I had selected the most remote district hospital I could find, in Lagunas, in the lower Huallaga valley.

I brought drugs I knew a rural hospital would not have, even heparin, and globulin serum against tetanus. Possibly due to my inexperience, that failed to translate into better survival for a case of neonatal tetanus.

I soon realized that that town was renowned in the province, local chieftains came to heal from chronic, severe ailments. But they came to see traditional healers, not me. People had been left for long periods of time without a physician and everybody felt qualified to treat common diseases or selfmedicate. I managed to treat some complicated cases such as obstructed labor. I had experience with laboratory procedures and was skilled at improvising - lacking an incubator, I resorted to use the patient's armpit as one.

Rather than spending time at the bar with mestizos, I liked to hang out with cocamilla villagers. I learned their trades, how to make an alcoholic drink fermenting cane juice in a hollow tree trunk where a large number of maggots floated. I would go with them and use nets and hooks to catch fish. Mestizos laughed at me when I returned proudly with fish some regarded as unedible.

Spanish nuns ran the school and helped at the hospital. I asked if they recalled a time of famine. They told me that a decade earlier, a US-based corporation drilled for oil in the area. Food cost exploded, men went to work for the oil company but spent their wages in beer and hired sex, and women and children were unable to continue slash-and-burn agriculture.

I did not charge anybody for my services, and paradoxically that did not get me any respect from the locals. They expected the local physician to be generous, tipping everybody and donating to every worthy cause, perhaps failing to realize that money would have to come from their own pockets had I chosen to charge them.

The day I left, the girl I was dating complained loudly I did not have sex with her. My coworkers from the Health Centers rolled their eyes and sent nonverbals "I told you". That incident reminded me of the Polynesian girl in "Mutiny on the Bounty" complaining of feeling rejected for the same reason.

Going Tribal - Aguarunas

Arrived this part of the Amazon basin in a military plane, canvas seats facing the aisle, loaded with gasoline drums. A missionary gave me a ride in his boat to the Aguaruna's capital, Yutupis. Gave him a bag containing 10lb of apples- a very valuable present when you are in the middle of nowhere.

Agurunas, living near the Peruvian-Ecuadorian border, are Jibaro indians, described by Captain Benavente in XVI century as the most ferocious warriors and headhunters the Spaniard Conquistadors had ever fought. Conquistadors wanted gold- and this land has a lot of it. In a good day you can panhandle 0.3 oz.

As soon as arrived to Yutupis -a neolithic village, discounting its hospital- I was given masato, a sort of beer women made chewing cassava and spitting the mix of root and saliva in a big pot, let to ferment.

I trained health promoters in the use of microscopes to diagnose tuberculosis and tropical diseases as lung fluke. I encouraged the use of the local language to name the chemicals: "capanto dutikatin numasupicbau" meant "red stain for rods [bacilli]". Promoters invited me to their homes and offered me delicacies such as roasted monkey.

After training was done, a health promoter came. In a broken Spanish, he said that people in his remote hamlet were dying from a misterious disease. I could not understand his description but I concluded it probably was a severe viral disease such as yellow fever. I told him bluntly that I was not sure what specific disease it could be. I left town the next day. I should have tried to sound more reassuring. They concluded that, if a specialist from the country's capital was unable to make a definitive diagnosis, then it was a case of witchcraft. Relatives of the dead killed the local witch doctor the night I left. The good news was, relatives of the witch doctor did not retaliate -perhaps his death is regarded as an occupational hazard. Months later I learned the outbreak had been rabies, transmitted by vampire bites.

I had mixed feelings about Aguarunas. They lived very hard lives -you can assess the quality of life by looking at pets and there, adult dogs looked like rats. These indians had been exploited by Europeans and their descents. Werner Herzog came there once to make a movie about Fitzcarrald, a XIX century guy Aguarunas considered somebody that exploited and killed Amerindians. Angry Aguarunas donning war paint in their faces destroyed Herzog's camp and filming equipment and made crew and actors flee for their lives.

But Aguarunas were -and probably continue being- polygamous. The displaced older wife was often set aside as an old sneaker. The socially acceptable behavior left to her was a suicide -the main cause of death among adult women- by drinking curare, an extract of a tropical vine that paralyzed muscles and slowly suffocated the poor woman.

Aguarunas live in a beautiful part of the Amazon basin -even some cockroaches are beautiful. One species, the size of a fist, was gorgeous in pale green and white. Still, I don't recommend tourism there- a couple of UK entomologists was killed a few years ago when entered this land without permission.