November 2009     San Francisco

The event billed as “Petting Zoo” was was sold out when I arrived, but of course this did not stop me: “You don’t understand.  I need to be here.”   I stood my ground.  The organizers finally relented, and I weaseled my way in.

Think Meat.  There was a pig on a spit out in the alley off Folsom Street, behind the aptly named Bloodhound bar.  I kind of scowled at it, since it was lacking all legs, shoulders, hams and knuckles, the best parts.  Meanwhile, I savored the complimentary bacon-enhanced whiskey concoction and watched two chefs at two tables butcher a goat and a sheep, in different ways.  Trays of meat floated around during all of this:  blood sausage, fresh chitterlings, rabbit/duck/olive meatballs basted in internal pig fat, beer sausage, chorizo, and other unidentifiable meaty nuggets.   Still, I was thinking “All you can eat? Yeah, right.  I’ve heard this before.”

I learned a thing or two about butcher tools and cuts, while sampling the good beer selection.  The chefs (Ryan Farr from Ivy Elegance and Taylor Boetticher from Fatted Calf) hacked out ribs, tenderloins and steaks from the animals and ground up sausage by mixing the remaining tougher cuts with helpings of pig lard. Many a glutton hovered close by, asking arcane questions and getting specific answers.

Finally the trussed pig made his way through the crowd at shoulder level, looking like a glazed tropical hardwood log, but with a head.  The chef raised his blade, and with one slice, went all the way through.  Oops, my mistake – they had first de-boned the whole animal, and stuffed the prime lower-pig cuts up inside it.  The cross-section glistened and oozed fat like a turducken. Oh, my.  We ate heavily, and elbowed to share the cracklins.

The best part of the whole night:  watching a robust fat girl, sweating profusely from gastronomic exertions, streaming sweat under her eyes, literally jumping up and down while squealing “Ear! Ear! Ear!”  Taylor shrugged, carved out a roasted pig’s ear and handed it to her directly.  I have only fed pigs’ ears to a neighbor’s pit bull, and now wondered what I had been missing.

I was fat and sweating by all of 830, groaning and belching but reaching for another lamb-goat-burger, and finally wheelbarrowing my bloated self out of there with a maple-bacon-brownie in each and every hand.  I could not have eaten a wafer-thin mint afterwards.

Do not miss the next circus carnivorous event.  I will be there.  In fact, this is yet another reason why I will not leave this town until they someday cart me off to a museum in a box full of salt, feet-first and tits-up.

July 4th, 2009    USA

Back in the US for a few weeks already, rocking the free world and not missing a single thing about Afghanistan.  I will not be going back there anytime soon, so the entertaining accounts of American subcultures resume next month.   Sorry, no more first-hand accounts of that charming Afghan culture, but I took advantage of having a high-speed internet connection again, and uploaded three short videos that I put together over the last year there.  My video camera skills are primitive, but I was able to edit them and attach some pretty good photos at the end of each video.

1)  Witness a game of Buzkashi, Afghanistan’s national sport. It is best described as rugby on horseback, using a headless goat or calf instead of a ball.  Full-contact, no rules, great horses and horsemen, and plenty of injuries to both.  (4:00)

2)  The ten-day road trip up in the North was amazing, and included this narrow gravel stretch between a river and a cliff. Badakhshan is the part of the country where it was safe and wild enough for me to hitch-hike, though this was shot from our  unmarked ambulance.  Hopefully youtube will not silence the audio because of copyright issues.  Set to John Lee Hooker’s “Dusty Road”  (3:04)

3)  This is a typical cross-town drive in Kabul, with some commentary.  As for the women begging on the road, some might have a knee-jerk reaction to blame the British, the Russians, the Americans, foreign aid wasted on high salaries for expats, or spending money on building the Afghan army instead of feeding the people.  Remember this:  Afghanistan is mostly fundamentalist Islamic Pashtun. Despite our huge efforts, the men do not allow their women access to education, jobs, health care, contraception, re-marriage for widows, or any other form of independence.  What you see here is the locally created result.  (3:33)

4)  Have some time to kill?  Here are the Afghanistan photo sets.   None are new, this is just a collection of them all.

AFG Summer/Fall 2008, (97 photos):  http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=270111263264998505/l=4389418017/g=6193089/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

AFG Fall/Winter 2009 (68 photos):  http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=295101263165058977/l=4373993017/g=6193089/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

AFG Winter/Spring 2009 (38 photos):  http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=963101263165084426/l=4373994017/g=6193089/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

Big Northern Road Trip 2009, (81 photos):  http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=889111263265748594/l=4391334017/g=6193089/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

Feyzabad 2009, (57 photos):  http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=145111263265826385/l=4391336017/g=6193089/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

Burned Afghan girl transport 2009, (35 photos):  http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=674111263265801607/l=4391335017/g=6193089/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

January 2009  Kabul, Afghanistan

Fair warning: Vegetarians and PETA-types should probably scurry along and not loiter here.

I had an Afghan moment tonight.  I am teaching a class tomorrow to security contractors about emergency medical procedures for chest trauma.  My employer is a start-up, and we do not have one of the $1500 airway dummies needed for hands-on training, so I asked Shafiq the guard to get me a goat torso from the butcher, with lungs, heart, and hide intact.  I was very specific.  He returned to the house that night and called out to me, “Sir, your goat is here. You come and see if it is right.”

I stepped to the hallway, and in walked the goat.  Damn.  I did not intend to go eye-to-eye with the warm brown farm animal before slaughtering him for a demonstration.  Was Shafiq trying to pull one over on me?  I would not give him that satisfaction, so I grabbed the goat by the neck, lifted his chin, and showed exactly where I wanted him decapitated.  A hand-chop to the spine marked the bottom of the rib-cage.  I accepted that the butcher sold me these useless parts at the whole-animal price, then would sell the rest of the meat again.  Yes, I got fleeced by a goat.

The power was out again when Shafiq came back, with the steaming carcass draped over his shoulder and the still-attached hide swinging in the freezing night air.  A flashlight revealed some internal organs still in place  – I did not need any viscera, it would only distract.  I went off to find a plastic bag in which to discard the innards, while Shafiq walked past me into the cold, dark house and flopped the remains of this filthy, matted, garbage-fed animal onto the kitchen table.  You know, the one where we eat.

I let this visual and olfactory treat wash over me, eventually exhaled, and resolved that he would have to work a little harder to get a rise out of me.  This whole idea was playing out differently than I had imagined.  The filth was already in place, everything was deeply contaminated now and my coarse houseman was waiting for direction, so I said “Go to it, man, just start cutting!”  I went to get the bag again, and returned to see him smeared in blood, a steaming liver in one hand, rummaging in the cabinet and drawers for a plate and utensils, joyously planning to cook the organs.  “We’ll make a kebab!” he blurted, as if this equalled a case of bacon to me.

I politely declined the local delicacy, and listened as he gestured to the mess on the kitchen table and insisted, “Sir, this is not a problem.  This blood is clean for some week.”  Mentally, I ticked off minor threats such as E. coli, tuberculosis, brucellosis, typhoid, hepatitis, mange, ringworm, lice, anthrax, scrapie, rabies, scabies, wasting disease, bubonic plague, and any other afflictions I could imagine my body hosting in this fecal country.  I supervised the clean-up, and thanked Shafiq for getting the job done at a reasonable price.  Now we could proceed with class.  He and the goat could potentially help save a few lives if my students’ helicopter makes a rough unscheduled landing out in Taliban land.

This little episode demonstrates what I mean when I say that hygiene is a foreign concept in these parts, explains why our septic tank is placed next to the well, and why the life expectancy is so low.  Well, that and the culturally entrenched inbreeding.

Somehow the peaceful evening ended up in the Afghan way:  sudden pointless violence.  Our white dog grew up ill-tempered and aggressive, and we really should get rid of him before he eats any children.  I finally named him “Leslie,” out of mutual disrespect.  I am not sure what fired him up tonight  – maybe the smell of a musky animal on the hoof, within our walls.  It could have been the liver kebab.  It could have been his name.

I walked out to open the shed where we would stash the goat torso until the morning (next to the live Soviet rocket,) when Leslie charged out of the dark to attack Grupp, our black german shepherd.  He had Grupp down and by the throat, then turned to attack me as I pulled them apart.  Oh, really?  This aggression will not stand, Leslie.  Letting a young dog get away with attacking people leads to trouble, so we squared off.  The vicious little bastard would not back down, and I accidentally punched poor Grupp pretty hard in the head when Leslie dodged it.  Sorry about that!  We fought to a draw I guess, but the next time I need fresh healthy body parts for the advancement of science and medicine, Leslie had better not turn his back on my butler, my butcher, my biohazard: Shafiq.