Monkey Meat - You can have the hand!

Monkey Meat... recognize the portion?

Hello from Ecuador! Here are a few details (from Jay) of our life in the land of eternal rain.

I flew to a small village called Ashuar of the Ashuar tribe last week. Myself, an Ecuadorian family practice resident, and Jonas, our guide, spent 2 days doing physicals on Compassion children and treating the rest of the tribe.


Jonas is 36 years old and grew up in the jungle as a Compassion Child himself. Compassion paid for his education and now he is a full-time missionary with them serving the next generation of sponsored children. What a beautiful legacy.


Most of you know I’m a hooked on fishing. I took my rod and reel to the village knowing a river would be nearby. Little did I know the village would take us barbasco fishing.


About 20 members of the tribe, two Ecuadorians and one gringo (that’s me) loaded into three very over-crowded wooden canoes and headed upstream on the Cotopaxi River.

Once we arrived at the fishing spot, I started casting with my ultra-light fishing rod. Everyone stopped and stared at me as if to say, “What is the crazy white man doing?!” The children (and adults) were fascinated with the old Mepps spinner and plastic worms. One older fisherman helped himself to some of my fishhooks. I thought it was a fair trade since he was driving the canoe.

After my entertainment value wore off, the people started smashing the barbasco roots with rocks while others damned the river with rocks. (see below) They use these naturally toxic roots to poison the fish. (Check out the videos under this subject on Youtube. Very interesting.)

The people put the crushed roots into woven baskets and then swished them in the water. A white cloud floats downstream and the poisoned fish sink to the bottom. You look for their white upturned bellies among the black rocks. We picked up 200 + fish. Most were the length of my finger but that’s still meat to them. That night we ate them cooked in banana leaves.

The second course at supper was monkey soup. The skin was really rubbery and the meat a little chewy, but good flavor. It is amazing what a little seasoning can do.

 

 I could identify my piece of monkey as an upper thigh. The bowl of soup next to me contained a complete forearm and hand. I could not have eaten that one.

 The head man of the village prayed a beautiful prayer of thanks to our heavenly Father in the name of our Lord Jesus. What an interesting contrast between their culture and ours. Maybe we will all be sitting around the banquet table in heaven and someone will pass a platter of monkey. You can have the hand.

 Some of the more interesting cases at the hospital of late include a 40 year-old-lady with a klebsiella liver abscess in septic shock, a 9-year-old with an epidural brain bleed (diagnosed without a CAT scan) drained by hand drill, and a lady with Tuberculosis abscesses all over her body. Never a dull moment.

Dane and a neighbor kid built a tree house 50-feet high in a huge tree 200 yards behind our house. It is still on the compound but looks like you are in the middle of the jungle. They even rigged up safety harnesses since it is so high. Scares me to death, but the platform was half done before I got back from the jungle. Hearing our concerns, Dane has grounded himself. He says he wants to live to see Nebraska prairies again.

Lynnelle and I spent a day shuffling from office to office in Puyo, the provincial capital, working on obtaining drivers licenses. About 2 more trips and we hope to be able to drive.

The weather has been so dreary here in Shell. Rain fell for 7 hours straight one day last week. We have had 3 days out of 15 with no rain and a few hours of sunshine here and there. Today, however, was a beautiful day. It's Saturday and we went fishing with another family and a few extra boys on a fast flowing mountain river with rocks up to the size of small cars. Wasn’t barbasco style, just plane ol’ hook and line. No luck but the scenery was great.

 Casting for the Great Fisherman,

Jay for the Allisons