Vegetarianism: Appalling or Appealing

I am an adventurous eater and I love meat. Typically, subsiding on local cuisine is a highlight of my international travel. When it comes to food, I will unapologetically use the overused cliché, “I’ll try anything once.” After one day in Nigeria, however, I’m wondering if I should cross meat off the list for the rest of my stay.

LUNCH: I dined at the small restaurant that sits on the same property as the NGO I am working with. I had a delicious pile of rice colored yellow with what I imagine was broth and spices. Atop the pile were a few cubes of beef also nicely flavored, but terribly tough. I did my best to cut off small pieces with the dull butter knives offered at the table. Even the small bites squeaked and bounced my molars apart as downward pressure was released. I chalked it up to being a small informal lunch spot with little competition in the area.

DINNER: “Maybe I’ll have chicken,” I thought. After a brief description of the menu items I was not familiar with, I settled on somovita, a polenta-like maize dish, with vegetable soup and my meat of choice: chicken. It sounded delicious. And it was…mostly. The vegetable soup was spicy. Generous amounts of hot pepper made the predominantly spinach “soup” (it was more like a thin stew) exciting. Mmmmm. Fish bones found in the soup led me to believe that it was not just vegetables, but this was fine by my non-vegetarian standards. I appreciated the complexity of flavors. What I didn’t appreciate was small bulbous pieces of what I can only assume was cartilage. Maybe chicken kneecaps? Slices of beef hooves, perhaps? Whatever it was it looked like small mushrooms, but was definitively an animal product. I avoided them and headed for the large piece of meat that sat covered in the green goodness that dominated the bowl. At first I thought maybe they didn’t hear me say chicken. This beef was even tougher than the beef I had had at lunch. I could hardly separate it from the bone and it had a large outer layer of stiff gelatinous fat. This couldn’t be chicken…oh, but it was. Upon further investigative surgery it became apparent that the meat underneath was chicken – the texture and color was a dead giveaway. I couldn’t quite tell which part of the chicken sat on my plate, but I think a piece I had assumed was the bone of the beef when I was operating under the mix-up theory was the neck. I feverously sawed at the unrecognizable piece of poultry. The knife was not up to the task and I carefully tried to pull pieces of the chicken off with my bare hands (the somovita was meant to be eaten with ones fingers so I was well within social bounds). With a tag-team effort by the knife and fingers, I was successful at getting nibbles of chicken off the bone, but it was tedious. Too tedious, really, to make the less than mediocre morsels worth the work. I focused on the vegetable soup and avoiding the cartilage.

The lesson I seem to be learning here is that caging animals and force-feeding them corn to fatten them up and keep them tender is cruel, but is a drastic improvement over eating lean free-range animals in West Africa. I’ll give Nigerian meat a few more shots, but I may just have to become the first vegetarian to be motivated by the lack of animal cruelty.

Unclaimed

Heather

There have been a lot of goodbyes on my trip. Some have been easy, some have been difficult. Today I said goodbye to Heather, but strangely after 2 ½ months of travel together, it didn’t seem like a real goodbye as we embraced on the side of the road in Jerusalem. It seemed more like a divergence of paths that would most certainly meet again.

We met in Egypt at Abu Simbal. Heather had just crossed from Sudan and I was on a hunt for other travelers to fill a felucca to head up the Nile. Three days floating and I thought she was alright – a hot & cold 31-year old Canadian engineer who had embarked on the same kind of journey as I had, one of adventure and self-discovery.

The more time we spent together, the more I liked her and the more the similarities between us became evident – to the point of being eerie at times. We solved problems the same way, had the same laissez-faire attitude towards banking, enjoyed the same type of travel experience (prioritizing people over sights and splurging on spas now and again), both peed with the bathroom door open, fairly consistently were drawn to the same souvenirs, obsessed over little things deconstructing emails and events of great and little significance and most importantly enjoyed one another’s company. Of course there were differences that often overshadowed our similarities to people who met us, but our combined personalities made ideal travel partners often playing good cop/bad cop and navigating our way as women through Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

I now sit here on the bus heading to Amman where I will fly home in a few day, county the many blessings that have come my way in the Middle East. Heather, despite our little stresses, is one of the greatest. It is a special person you can meet one day and spend the next 75 days and nights with. Thank you, Heather. ‘Til next time, dear friend.

Kosher McDonalds

Tonight Heather and I took a stroll through Jerusalem people watching and putzing. We stumbled across McDonalds. Some of the Israeli franchises look just like home. Others display signs in blue and white rather than the classic red and yellow. The difference: Kosher McDonalds. Other than the color scheme we wondered what was different. We approached the golden arches and walked inside and stood in front of the menu boards.

“I don’t see a cheeseburger, do you? Meat and dairy is a kosher no-no.”
“No, wait. Is that cheese on the #4?”
“No, I think that is thousand island dressing. Maybe with non-dairy dressing.”
“Is mayonnaise dairy?”
“Sometimes. Maybe here it is just transfats. What about the #4? Hey, look, there is ice cream. Dairy!”

With high-level philosophical conversations such as these around every corner, I wondered how we would ever return to regular life. Traveling offers non-stop entertainment or at least the opportunity for it – the investigation of what differentiates kosher McDonalds from regular McDonalds, just one example.

So, for the answer: #4 was a cheeseburger and we were in a regular McDonalds. Kosher McDonalds does not serve cheese, is closed on the Sabbath and offers ice cream, but in a section completely separated from the rest of the eating establishment.

1984 in 2008

At the end of the long fenced-in walkway was a small kiosk and revolving entryway that could be locked with the push of a button. We had to show our passports to a young Israeli soldier behind bulletproof glass and proceeded across an empty parking lot. We passed a large poster covering a piece of the wall from top to bottom. “Peace Be With You,” it wished us in English, Arabic and Hebrew. “Peace Be With You,” from Israel’s Ministry of Tourism. Other than this colorful sign everything was grey, blocky and bulletproof.

We proceeded into another covered walkway and descended into a cold and sterile building where we cued up for our departure out of the West Bank. Metal bars wound around the floor keeping us all in line while another remotely controlled vertical turnstile regulated the flow of people entering the next room. We waited, hearing voices being projected over a loudspeaker in the next room where a large x-ray was barely visible around the corner. We waited, as two by two the line grew shorter.

The x-ray machine was sandwiched between two large bulletproof window. A tall man about twenty stood behind one with a large semi-automatic riffle. The other room was vacant. Cameras were pointed at us from every angle. A woman’s voice shouted directives at us, “Show me your passport!” and “Keep moving.” We waved our passports around in the air in front of the cameras. We spoke into the air saying that we were still waiting for our bags to come through the x-ray. The conveyor belt started moving again. “Keep moving,” she repeated still out of sight somewhat reminiscent of the Great Oz – confused, angry and invisible.

Our bags came through and we grabbed them and proceeded to stand in front of one of four doors. The door’s sign read “Wait for Green Light.” We waited. The green light lit up and we shuffled into the next small room where another empty bulletproof window sat and another door stood closed and imposing. Cameras and speakers placed to allow for the soldiers to conduct invasive strip searches without placing themselves in harms way. Luckily our U.S. and Canadian passports gave us a pass on such antics. We waited in front of the next door for its light to turn green.

The door opened onto a larger room where we joined another line. We waited to show our passports and Israeli visas to a young pierced female soldier. Most of those in line were tourists or foreign aid workers, but some were Palestinian. We watched one of every few get turned back, all Palestinians. Those who were approved based on the permissions they presented were also subject to a fingerprint scan before passing through the final turnstile. We were approved and walked out of the blocky maze-like structure, nodding goodbye to another heavily armed soldier lingering behind the final bulletproof kiosk. The next time we passed through, the dehumanizing mechanical nature of the experience stayed the same, but the route changed. Different doors led to different rooms. Changing the path would prove to be challenging for those hoping to plan and execute an attack. Keep them guessing, keep them in.

The Wall

There are two walkways next to one another divided by grey bars, one buffered by a 30' wall separating Israel from Palestine. There are two signs – Exit & Entrance. I looked to Heather as we approached. Were we exiting Palestine or entering Israel? This was only the beginning of the confusion. A woman repeating “Inshallah,” or “God willing” passed under the entrance sign. We followed, but took our time slowly proceeding down the “entrance” path while looking at the graffiti that covered the wall – “Down with the wall,” “Free Palestine,” “Only God can Judge.” I stopped. One particular image caught my eye. A woman in a headscarf was sprayed on the cold gray wall. The text below read “I am not a terrorist.” I unzipped my backpack and reached from my camera to capture and image that was just about to take on a stronger meaning for Heather and me. As I framed the shot, a woman approached on the other side of the bars heading back into Palestine. She stopped.

The pride she had put into her outfit was apparent. She wore a pressed white blazer and matching hat. She clenched her purse in her right hand. Her hair had been styled for her visit to Jerusalem – only 15 minutes by bus, this was a big trip. But she was walking the wrong way. On the other side of the bars, she was walking back to Bethlehem, agitated. She stopped and spoke to us.

“They said they would help me. They said if I went back to get my papers that they would help me through. When I came back, they laughed at me. They laughed at me.” Her emotions were erupting as she spoke. She had been strong and had held it together, but with kind ears listening the building frustration, shame and anger melted into tears. Her words were jumbled and confused by despair. Her pain was chillingly clear and her story echoed by the graffiti behind her.

“I was born in Jerusalem. This is my home. Jerusalem is my home. They said they would help, but instead they laughed. I am a human. I did as they asked. I took a taxi back home to get my papers. I took a taxi. I had it. I had it. I am not a football. I am a human. I did as they said.” She was crumbling before me. Heather and I both reached through the bars and grabbed her hand as tears streamed down our faces as she continued, “They wouldn’t treat their sisters like this. All they did was laugh…They said they would help, but they laughed at me. They treat me like I’m not human. They played with me. They wouldn’t do this to their sister…”

The woman who had led us under the entrance sign appeared again, now on the other side of the bars still repeating “Inshallah” as she walked, head down, back into Bethlehem. She stopped where we stood with the woman in white, grabbed her hand and led her back as well. Heather and I stood still for a moment. Wiped our tears and in a haze began our own journey through the dehumanizing border crossing from the West Bank back into Israel.

Onward Christian Tourists

Israel is crawling with tour buses filled with religious “pilgrims.” They wear nametags, feast on buffet dinners and hold prayer sessions at all of the major sites – where Jesus was born, where Jesus died, where Gabrielle told the shepards of Christ’s birth, where Jesus turned water into wine, where Jesus attended synagogue, where Jesus started preaching, Joseph’s carpentry shop, where Mary was told she was to bear the son of God, where Mary dripped breast milk on a rock…you get the picture.

One would think that these would be places of great piousness, places where groups from Sri Lanka to Spain would gather in harmony to celebrate the teachings of Our Lord, Jesus and all that he stood for…one would think these would be places of love and generosity. In reality, however, Christian values give way to fervor. Guides elbow those who aren’t paying members of their group. Priests bark orders at antsy pilgrims trying to get a glimpse before their turn. It’s a rat race in which the idol symbols of Christianity create a momentary fanaticism and in which the cornerstones of Christianity are lost. Granted, the Ten Commandments didn’t specifically include “Thou shalt not yell at your neighbor for waling into your photo,” but the general principles should lead one to this conclusion. It is sad to see the good of Christianity crumble in the very places is should be the strongest. The tour buses can take these people to places where Jesus walked, but apparently can’t make them walk like Jesus.