A Meaty Confession

I have a confession to make:

I... eat meat.

I can no longer call myself a vegetarian.

Not even by Colombian standards. (Chicken, here, is not considered meat)

There are some who would argue I could never call myself that in the first place, since every month or so, in the US, I had a tendency to nibble on a piece of bacon or two....(apparently the more appropriate term for a person like this is flexitarian, or, "part-time" vegetarian.)

However, at this point, I'd be stretching even the loosest of terms describing non-meat-eaters. Just tonight, I aborted a trip for chocolate ice cream in favor of picking meat off the bones of a chicken portion at my neighboring "broasted chicken", place, Barranquil-pollo.

(The most common form of fast-food chicken is made "broasted" style here, but it's really just butter-brushed whole-chickens roasting on wall-spits. They snip you off parts and you eat it with one one single gloved hand OJ Simpson-style, no utensils required - or supplied).

Um. Yeah. Actually.

The transition back to carnivore has been a gradual thing--as was giving up meat in the first place. I'd only been a full vegetarian for a year or so, prior to the Peace Corps - which came mostly from moving out of my college co-op, Foley House, where we got to eat organic/free-range meat, and then not wanting to pay the money for that quality just for myself. See, I don't have anything against meat itself, I just think the mainstream industry is not only unsustainable, but gross. As is the feel of raw chicken. As is the texture of meat-gristle between one's teeth.

Why cook meat, anyway, when there are delicious, protein-laden things like garbanzos and black beans and greek yogurt to cook in tasty, wonderful dishes like black-bean sweet potato burritos, hummus, curries, veggie burgers...Ya know.

Fast-forward to a week or so ago, when I was spooning up the limp, lard-coated green beans and carrots my well-meaning host family often serves me for a vegetarian-style breakfast (this is relatively lucky, that they'd feed me veggies at all, in Colombian context, but...) That morning, instead of thinking, "ooh, this would be better not fried in butter," or, "ooh, this would be better with some sort of spices," I thought, "Ya know what would make this better? If it were CHICKEN."

A turning point, perhaps?

Here's the thing, though--I'm not the only one. Take, for instance, two of my fave co-vegetarian volunteers from my cohort, Abby and Jessica. These lovely, vegetable obsessed ladies only reluctantly touched chicken upon arrival as well as for most of the past year (we've never had too much of a choice with chicken v. actual vegges).

A salchipapa: fried hotdogs and  potato
fries topped with  mayo, lettuce,  fried onions,
ketchup, pineapple sauce. Yum?

 In the past few weeks, I've seen both of them devour not just chicken, but salty, oily, unidentified "carne." (Meat from a cow. Often hacked into sell-able pieces on bloody stumps along the road. Tends to be salted, boiled, and/or fried into some sort of gristly softened lump served upon a mountain of white rice and potatoes and spaghetti. Sound appetizing? Well...the meat part at least? Actually...sort of.)

And that doesn't even cover Abby's infectious hunt for dried sausage, or our excited consumption of deep-fried hot dog chips that were served as part of our salchipapas...

The other day, Abby and I split some splurge-worthy food in a nice restaurant. Skipping straight past falafel, chicken with peanut satay, and fish fillets, we went straight for the fillet mignon. (a 3 course meal of pumpkin soup, steak, and fruit crisp for 14 bucks, split two ways...a totally non-regrettable splurge...)  Anyway, the point is, I wouldn't have ordered a steak at ANY point in my life, let alone in the last few years of edging towards, and becoming a vegetarian.

Even to me, this is a bit astounding.

Things that can't be discounted:

•  the terribleness of food here (at least meat doesn't taste wrong to be salty, whereas for vegetables, rice, and beans the excessive salt and oil is perhaps not so intuitive). 
• the general lack of protein we've experienced for the last year (beans are generally served here as specks among piles of rice...or as tiny portions alongside heaps of rice)
• the inability to store and/or cook my own food on a regular basis

Ultimately, no excuses. I don't LIKE meat...I just, want it. When I eat it, I don't have a craving to eat a box of cereal in one sitting. Lacking other options that have taste, meat makes me feel like I'm eating food. I get antsy going through a day without some sort of meat. Sometimes I settle for a pile of eggs, if I can't do better. Things like chicken-pie, broasted chicken, scrambled eggs, and dried sausage have found their way into my weekly, if not daily diet. 

I may have not swung quite as far into the darkside, but, I guess it's not remiss to quote former vegetarian Abby, who at the end of a certain meat-filled dinner, sighed contentedly and said, "Well, the day just isn't complete without eating three different types of meat!"

Another "thinking about the 1 year mark" sort of post.

This will not be the most original or non-cliched post, so I'll keep it sorta short. Just a cute lil life analogy, in regards to finishing up with year 1 of my service and going through one full school year -

Yesterday, I ran a 10K race in 100+ heat around the streets of Barranquilla. I have maybe run a total of 120 minutes, combined, since almost a year ago, last January. I do aerobics and things in my sweatbox of a room, pretend to play soccer a couple times a month, and walk 5-20 miles a week. Ya know. Something sort of like exercise. Before the race, I didn't think I'd make it running the whole way.

So there we are, standing in this crush of people, pouring sweat and entering dehydration status before we even start to run. But once we started running, I felt comfortable. When I hit the 5k mark, I realized it had only taken me 30 minutes to get there, and I was still going strong.

Then, in kilometer 7, an incredible runners' high hit. I couldn't stop grinning. After a year of not running (city streets, bad schedule, pollution, security issues), there I was, running, not as unprepared as I thought, and super happy to be doing it. Can't even describe how happy I was. Movement! Exercise! I was miserable from the heat and a tad short of breath, but starting to feel like I could do this thing.

This coming week, myself and two other volunteers are running a girls' camp for some of our 7th graders. It's a leadership camp. It will be all in Spanish. I've had some experience doing this sort of work, but never been in charge. A year ago, I couldn't speak Spanish. Now, my Spanish isn't close to perfect, I don't have all the words right at hand for my workshops, but, I can look them up, use them, and execute. Woohoo.

So to come back to the analogy, we'll say that I'm still at the "5k" mark of my service. Which means, ya know, I'm starting to think I can do this.  A year in, I'm feeling more comfortable with things...like, Spanish. And being more assertive about my schedule at school, picking counterparts to focus on, and knowing my students. I'm building on this year's momentum with secondary project plans for next year, and getting a handle on what exactly my overall role is (that's for sure a work in progress), but also constructing relevant, informed ideas on how to approach next year, and making my time and role here more productive and efficient.

What I'm saying, is that coming up on next year, I don't think I'm totally prepared. I'm still not a formal teacher, which means I do a lot on the fly without any formal knowledge base to work with. Still don't know exactly what my 2nd year-long goals are, and I know that as always, flexibility and adaptation will be key. But...I've been moving in the heat. Doing some sorts of related activities. I'm at the '5K', with what might turn out to be adequate preparation to finish the race.

I can only hope I'll hit the 7k point soon...not the distance, necessarily, but the crazy awesome runner's high.

My time at the race wasn't great, something like 11 minute miles. AKA, my worst time in any timed distance event ever. But, considering the circumstances, I'm feeling pretty good about it. 'Cause you know what? The race time only matters in context of what I've done in the past, pre-Colombia, rather than in regards to this year.

So I say, context - shmontext... Both for determining what "success" means in terms of the race, and for my service... because, who says that what I'm doing here is anything like what I've ever done before? (establishing a lifestyle where everything builds logically on itself, well, considering that is something else to ponder entirely).

But for now, this is how I know that I'm a real Peace Corps Volunteer...I've become perfectly fine with redefining success!