Tastes Like Chicken...

This one’s not for the squeamish.

There’s a volunteer at EWB who has become something of a legend for his ability to integrate into the local culture. I’ve never met the man. His name is Paul Slomp. I gather he not only does development work but plants his own crops and milks his own goats somewhere in Zambia. During volunteer training several of us were swapping stories about our most uncomfortable culinary experiences. Someone told the following story:

Paul is sitting down to a formal traditional meal with several prominent members of an African community. They are serving a type of chicken soup. As his soup is poured, a decapitated head, complete with beak, plops into the bowl. “You are lucky!” exclaims the man next to him. “You got the head!” Not wanting to offend his host, Paul dutifully eats it. Beak, skull, and all.

He won in absentia. Sarah, director of EWB’s SCALA program in the Philippines came in a close second with her account of the Century Egg, a fetal chicken egg that is left to ferment for one hundred days before being cracked open and swallowed whole and raw in a dark corner somewhere, the reason being that no one wants to see what they’re consuming. Wisely, she’d abstained from the practice.

I just met the Cambodian version.

Being a vegetarian in Cambodia is difficult. They just don’t have the concept for it. If you say “I don’t eat meat,” they locals will stare at you with incomprehension before responding, “Okay, but you should try this. It’s made from pork. You eat pork right?” Eating from local vendors is always something of a meat-eating risk but supporting local business is a priority for me. Less than two hours ago I finished a long day in the field. I have to be awake and ready to work at 1am tonight. We’re surveying vegetable distributors at local markets. 1am is the time when most of their buying and selling occurs. I didn’t have time to cook dinner. Instead, I wandered down to the market for a big bowl of soup from a vendor I’d visited before. She speaks English, so I felt relatively safe.

The street-soup system is simple. Choose a type of noodle. Choose a meat. Sit. Wait. The last time, I chose a flat noodle and asked for hardboiled eggs, explaining that I didn’t eat meat. The vendor looked at me like I was crazy but agreed.

The two eggs that arrived in my soup had been broken into small bits. I mistook some of these bits for mushrooms at first because they were dark gray. I saw that everyone else who was eating eggs was eating them with spoons from small stands as though they were soft-boiled. “Oh,” I thought, “She looked at me oddly because the eggs aren’t for soup. The dark colour must be the result of the soft egg white being boiled in the dark soup broth.”

Tonight I ordered the same. This time though, both eggs came whole, not in small bits. The yolk looked a little veiny but I wasn’t too concerned. “Must be the broth again,” I thought. I saw the egg-white was coloured gray again. I was proud of myself that I no longer thought it was a mushroom. I noticed that the eggs split into smaller pieces only along certain seam lines. That seemed odd. They tasted a little stringy. It made me think disturbingly of feathers.

My soup was two thirds gone. With a sense of foreboding, I swallowed. I dipped my spoon back into the bowl, raised it, and looked at its contents. Next to a small feather, a decapitated fetal head and neck looked back at me. In retrospect, that veiny yolk should have been a bit of a giveaway.

I quickly realized that I’d already been through this with three other eggs. Mechanically, I finished the last of my soup. I paid, queasily strolled home, took a big glass of orange drink, and promised myself I would never eat the ‘soft-boiled’ eggs here again.

I’m pretty sure they’ll be revoking my vegetarian membership card soon.