August 26, 2011
Ok, so this eating meat thing is really conflicting. I have been a vegetarian for a little over 8 years, and I didn’t realize how emotional it would be to eat meat again.
I decided to eat meat during my time in Peru for a couple of reasons. One reason being that my motivation for being vegetarian in the United States (the environment, world hunger, my own personal health, and animal cruelty and factory farming) are not applicable here in the small markets where my money will not be going to overpowering, monopolizing corporations with gigantic slaughterhouses that torture animals and pollute our air and land… but instead to individuals who live their lives just to sell a few chickens a day to put food on the table for their families, and these animals are raised naturally and humanely. Secondly, I decided that it wasn’t truly solidarity to come into a developing country with this seemingly elitist vegetarian diet where there are people here who could not afford soy burgers or meat substitutes or compensatory vitamins (if these things were even available), thus in order to walk more with the people I decided to compromise this part of my life. Third, it is extremely rude and offensive to turn down food when someone has killed a chicken for you or is offering you a part of their cow as a gift or special meal that they are proud to offer, so I want to be sensitive to this part of the culture.
The first piece of meat I had was chicken on a chicken leg in Lima. It felt so wrong to be ripping another animals flesh apart from its bone and ingesting it into my body. I didn’t really realize how strange and wrong it would feel. I am getting more used to it though and I think that it will be ok. It isn’t that it doesn’t taste good because it DEFINITELY does, but it just doesn’t feel right… oh well, maybe it will get better with time?? And the hamburgers are really, really good…..
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