Hello all, I'm freshly back from my adventures in a Tandroy village. Spent all Saturday in a Tata on the road home, spent all Sunday recovering. Bucket showers never felt so luxurious.
A quick summary:
Things I have eaten since I last saw you all:
- Sea urchin, both cooked and raw.
Guess which one is infinitely preferable? My host father dove into the reef and came out with 20 or so sea urchins. We started a bush fire along the strand and tossed them in. One eats them, then, by beating them with rocks till they crach and then scraping off the yellowish meaty inside with a fingernail and slopping it into your mouth, along with some incidental spines and sand. They're a bit of an acquired taste. Good as an accent maybe, a bit strong when you're on your fifteenth and there are Malagasy
yelling "masalasalanao misakafo!" at you. They love to force feed guests here.
- Snails, head, middle, and tail.
There was quite a bit of desperate under the breath muttering to my translator when a snail the size of my spread out hand emerged from the fire and was placed in front of me. "Oh yeah!" he said, "You can eat all of that, I used to have it when I was a kid" and he took one and proudly slurped (ok, gnawed. These things have the consistency of tennis balls) it all down, including the little squiggly end where the snail poop is. Well, not wanting to be a bad guest, I got to work. Ten minutes to get through the foot, 5 for the middle. Then the end. I have eaten a lot of things, but I have never, never, experienced anything as nasty as that snail. My CEL student was asking how it was, and I couldn't even hear him, it was taking that much concentration to keep my jaw muscles clenched. Well, I ate it. Once I'd swallowed, my host father returned from more reef dying, saw the snail and looked horrified. They may eat them in Tulear, but apparently even at Faux Cape, where in drought years they have to eat cactus leaves to survive, they let that particular delicacy slide. Thanks a lot, Cedric.
- Reef fish and under minimum lobsters
We ate them anyway. The first time a lobster, clearly too small, appeared from my host fathers sack, we had a little debate about it. Our host father realized we were concerned and went and got the stick that the authorities have passed out to show what size you can take. It's a piece of wood the size of your hand with a nail in it. You set the lobsters head against the nail, and the tail is supposed to be longer than the stick. Our host father propped up his two lobsters, and proudly showed us that they were a good cm short. Brandon and I nodded and smiled back, unsure why we were supposed to be comforted. Cedric laughed. "En brousse," he explained, "we use the minimum as the average."
- Chicken (neck, guts, heart, lungs... everything but the liver and the rear)
The liver because it is so good that someone else always gets it first. The rear because it is considered the best part and so is reserved for the head of household, the father.
- Grasshoppers (well cooked)
Imagine this; you are sitting and writing in a notebook. The villagers are sitting around you, playing around and generally using you as a toy (we are the main entertainment, and there's always somebody with nothing to do) Suddenly, six wingless, legless grasshoppers are dropped onto your paper, and a smiling eight year old is repeating "tsara sakafo" (good food). Cautiously, I scooped one up and gestured toward my mouth. The mother shook her head "Manta Misaka" she said, which translates to roughly not ready to eat. She sent the girl off to the house, and she returned two minutes later with freshly crisped grasshoppers. They showed me how to pull the heads off, then crunch them whole. They were actually one of my favorite things that I've eaten that trip.
The less said about Malagasy rum the better. It's nice that it's only available in small quantities.
Surprising gifts that I have received/been offered by my doting Tandroy host parents.
Her name was Mainty (black) and I ate her for lunch today. Carrying her home was a bit awkward, since my hands were full with our other gifts, but we managed, mostly because she was too exhausted from the bus ride to struggle much.
not a real one, but a prop carved out of sisal stalk (they don't have any wood in Faux Cape, too few trees). We used it during our ritual zebu dance (read above) I offered it to my fort Dauphin host sisters and they promptly almost killed themselves with it, as would have children anywhere.
- Six uncooked bageda and a bag of antaky
Antaky is a bean which is dry, tasteless, and not worth much in anything but a corn dish; even the tandroy don't eat it on it's own. When they were teaching us words they thought were important (the time of the day without a watch, the parts of their house, and things to eat. "Do you have this in the US?" they asked. "No" we responded. They were horrified. Then, when it was time to go, one of the girls appeared with a big bag of it. "To take back to the US with you", they explained. They are wonderfully thoughtful. I gave it to my host family here in Fort Dauphin, we'll see if it shows up at dinner tonight.
Love you all! More soon.
-Char
