There is Drama Here After All! Part 2--Jonathan

Yes, truly; there is even more excitement here than my previous blog post would have you believe. Prepare to be amazed, for Malawi is full of surprises.

An example of excitement I had neglected to see before the incident with the dark night and the walking and—well, you know—was the animals. Wow! It's pretty crazy over here. I think Blantyre must have the highest density of African wildlife outside of a National Geographic magazine, because we've seen tons of critters. And because they're in a city, they've gotten used to people and are absolutely fearless, so it's led to some pretty crazy encounters. Let's see...where to start...well, I've already told you about the mongrel dogs that snarl and growl at us every time we leave our house. Oh—and in just three weeks we've seen probably three birds flying in the sky, and one perched in a tree! (It was looking at me with its beady little eyes—I swear!) We've had monster ants of one inch and smaller more ferocious ones wander menacingly around our floor by our feet. Crazy, right? Just wait; it gets better. We've seen three flees, three mosquitoes (I murdered two of them), and a dead cockroach in the school (I didn't do it, but I did leave him there for someone else to pick up). And just today I saw a herd of tini-tiny ants attacking our kitchen sponge. So you can definitely see that things are just hopping around here.

Want to hear about something even crazier than the wildlife? Huh? You don't? Oh, well, no matter. We don't worry about things like that here. I'll tell you anyway. I had determined beforehand to eat whatever people fed me, so I have been. And let me tell you—that's probably been the most exciting thing of all. Now, as most of you know, I was raised vegetarian and was kept so apart from meat that I didn't even know it existed until I was six (I'll tell you another time) and hadn't seen it until the time I was fourteen (supermarkets are rated PG-13 for meat, and my parents wanted to be on the safe side). The first time I tasted meat before coming here was once when I was probably seventeen when Subway accidentally put some ham in my sandwich. I took one bite and let me tell you!—I loved it! It was amazing, and from that day forward I eagerly anticipated when I might try it again. Then Africa came, and I readily and nobly vowed to eat what was placed before me. I ate all manner of strange vegetarian dishes, fish from lake Malawi, tuna pizza...and then came The Beef. Now, I had been doing quite well up until The Beef; the strange vegetarian food was, if not always delicious, palatable at worst. The Malawi fish was scrumptious. The tuna was not to die for, but quite good, with a spicy tang (or maybe that was the jalapenos, I dunno).

But then came The Beef.

It came to me like this: one of the families that have kids in our school had been making and bringing food for us to school. It had been great: lentils, flatbread, that tuna pizza...and then last week came The Beef. This beef was diced in chunks about the size of fours dice stuck together, or a little bigger. If I knew more about meat I would tell you how it was cooked, but since I'm guessing I'll guess that it was boiled. In any case, it was mixed with chunks of potato of about the same size and a special sauce. The Beef smelled wonderful.

After school, I took The Beef home. I got out some leftover rice and beans, and some bread, and sat down at a desk (we have no table, just two desks) with The Beef. I was slightly apprehensive, as this was by far the most heavy duty meat I had encountered in my short career as a connoisseur, so I placed two potatoes and one chunk of The Beef on my plate before filling up the rest with the other stuff. The Beef looked marvelous, but I did notice a bit of a stringy appearance. Though rather more looking forward to sampling The Beef than anything else, I ate around it for three or four minutes, eying its stringiness while Jennifer looked on between mouthfuls of rice. Soon she said, “Did you try it yet?” I said that no, I hadn't, but had eaten a potato and was just about to, and promptly popped my own personal chunk of The Beef in my mouth. I chewed. It was pretty good! A little chewy, and a little stringy, to be sure, but pretty good! I told her so, and continued chewing. I popped in a little potato to see how it was originally (from the very garden of Eden, I told Jen) meant to be eaten. It was even better! I soon swallowed, and looked up at Jen. She then said that she would have tried it, only she saw tendons and blood vessels. My eyes bugged. “B-b-blood v-vessels? H-how did you kn-know it was a, a tendon?” I stammered. “Because of A & P lab,” she said. My mind said, “Ha! She's just imagining it because she a-assumes it must be there!” But the longer I looked at The Beef, the more I realized that I saw them, too. So I quickly popped another piece of The Beef in my mouth so that I would once and for all get over my slight (though very real) psychological aversion to meat.

This piece was chewier.

It sprawled across my tongue in one long, unified whole. It refused to be chewed. It slid from one position to another as though stretching on a soft gymnastics mat. Suddenly, my mother's whole “that thing used to be alive” mentality broke upon me in full force. I imagined that I had chewed away all of the meat and was now just juggling a long, tough tendon across my tongue. I tried to swallow it, quick, like a pill, and gagged. Jen said, “Did you throw up?” “No, no,” I managed, “I just tried to swallow too big of a piece.” Sure, Jonathan. Visions of moving cow flesh were filling my brain, and I stuffed more rice in my mouth to dilute the tendon. I fought with it for minutes on end. Jen watched me as I tensely clutched the table. Little beads of sweat broke out on my forehead and my breathing quickened, but my jaw moved on. I swallowed.

For days I lived in fear of a day, soon to come, when a slab of meat is placed before me. Would I be able to conquer the steak with grace? Or would I have to choose between offending my hostess by not eating it, and offending her by eating it with pain in my eyes and sweat in my hair? No! I finally decided that I would be strong. I would eat The Steak, not as I ate The Beef, but as a conqueror. I will relish it. Now I do not live my days in fear, but neither do I sleep at night. I toss and turn. I wake suddenly in terror from dreams in which cows stand looking at me from across the road with their big, sad eyes. These same eyes watch me as I ride the minibus past their pastures. They are mournful, haunting eyes. Were they always so sad? I think not. No, they have become so because they see that another is joining the ranks of infamy. They know I am now among those that feast on them, The Beef.

NOTE: Virtually all of the above is, again, exaggerated. (Yes, I know you knew that again, but I again figured I'd let you know just in case I was again wrong about knowing you knew it.) Actually, the stuff about the wildlife is pretty much straight fact, except for the part about the bird staring at me. It actually winked.