It’s been a while since I talked about crazy animal stories or weird food items. And usually, I can do both at the same time, because they eat almost anything here. Before I launch into the pictures, though, i want to tell you that part of our job here is to go from house to house (like Mormons?) talking to people about culture, health, or whatever. It makes it so people are comfortable with our presence, and makes being here safer for us, because the community looks out for people it knows. At most all of these visits, their rules of hospitality cause them to offer us food. Because of these same rules, we can’t refuse it, regardless of how terrifying it is. Today was one such example, when we were gleefully offered boiled cabbage and cow stomach soup.

Emily gave me the look, and I had to eat it. The deal is, the taste isn’t actually that bad. But the texture is unspeakably awful: imagine eating thick rubbery inner tube in chunks about the size of a pack of matches, but one side is covered with filia (coarse, hairlike fingers of protein that extract nutrients from the inside of the stomach). Mmm, mmm good. I gagged on the first one as I swallowed it whole, almost vomiting on the table. Realizing that would be a faux pas, i had to chew the next 2 pieces in half. It was the longest lunch of my entire time in Guatemala.

But, enough of that. Here’s some pictures of something else they like to eat here: turewex. A few days ago I saw some kids standing around holding tree branches, and when i asked, they explained that they swing them through the air to catch turewex to eat. The next day, the neighborhood kids brought me one: a dragonfly. I respectfully declined to eat it. But, the local nurse DID give me a brief instructional course in how to hunt them (top picture). I tried it, and it was a lot of fun.

Emily had several interesting food and animal encounters. She found a carrot in the market that looks like a mandrake root. Luckily, it didn’t scream and drive us mad. The villagers keep lots of different animals, like piggies (they make hilarious snorting sounds when they see you coming). One lady was taking a really big pig somewhere the other day, and it got away form her, and I had to catch it by grabbing the rope it was dragging. Funny stuff. A few days later, Emily got a chance to feed the little turkeys at a different neighbor’s house.

For all you linguists out there, the Q’anjob’al Mayan word for Pig is txitam, and Turkey is ak’ach. The “tx” sound is kindof like “ch” in Engish, but in the back of your mouth, and the apostrophe indicates a glottal stop (a sort of throat click).