Too Many Cooks

It feels a bit strange to have lunch with someone who is eating a monkey. A bit stranger may be the fact that I am the reason the monkey is on the menu in the first place. Well, sort of. I put the word out that I want skeletons. Howler hyoid, manatee skull, sloth paw – what better fieldwork keepsake? Recently I visited a house where 3 macacos pregos (capuchins) were living in an enclosure. My friend and assistant, Ney, asked how much one would cost if we wanted to buy it (answer: 70 reais, about $32, for the smallest one, a female). I recognize that my desire for specimens-cum-souvenirs is probably fraught with ethical incongruities. However, I really don’t want to end the life of anything myself, just function as the recipient of death’s bounty – a sort of “hey-if-you’re-going-to-kill-it-anyway-can-I-have-its-teeth?” approach. Not to mention, I’m pretty sure my student health insurance – even with the supplement for calamities abroad – wouldn’t cover a brawl between me and a menaced capuchin, especially if I were the one to initiate the “collaboration.”

Today, happily, a monkey skull and vertebrae (for those interested: Sapajus apella, adult female) came my way via a vendor in the open-air market for the reasonable price of 20 reais. While I used my tweezers to remove flesh from the skull (I wasn’t spending much time on my eyebrows anyway), the rest of the monkey went in the pot for lunch. Yes, some people here eat monkey, sometimes. While this may seem less than tempting to most Americans, I suspect that fresh meat from the jungle is much healthier than say, a “beef” burrito from Taco Bell. And, how many of us really know what’s in a hot dog? I was happy the monkey didn’t go to waste. Did I try it? I hate to disappoint, but, no, I didn’t. After cleaning the muscle and ligaments and brain matter, I really wasn’t hungry for meat, monkey or otherwise. Rice and beans it was.

In the end, the “chef” and I had very different ideas about how to process the monkey remains. I wanted a slow boil. He won, and broke the back of the cranium with a knife. Sigh.

Ancient at 50

On another possibly more reader-friendly note: the metal “cauldron” in this picture has been in the courtyard of the house for a couple of weeks now. I’m told it’s very old, “at least 50 years,” but I think it might be older, maybe some relic of colonial agriculture? I wish I had more details – it’s impressive.

Finally, on another unrelated note, a couple weeks ago I took a trip with my friends to a community called Monte Hermon (“Herman Hill” is more like it). We left Portel at 9:30 p.m. and arrived at 6:30 a.m., sleeping in hammocks on the boat. The purpose of the trip was for my friends who work for EMATER (Empresa de Assistência Técnica e Extensão Rural), to register women for an agriculture outreach program. They kindly let me tag along.

The boat we rode in on

We look a bit like colorful larvae

You can see a sloth in this açaí palm (and, no, I didn’t ask someone to kill it for me)