{"id":10654,"date":"2014-10-08T08:26:53","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T15:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.happycow.net\/blog\/?p=10654"},"modified":"2014-10-14T21:05:57","modified_gmt":"2014-10-15T04:05:57","slug":"overcoming-africas-flesh-fetish-how-a-vegan-diet-saved-my-peace-corps-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.happycow.net\/blog\/overcoming-africas-flesh-fetish-how-a-vegan-diet-saved-my-peace-corps-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Overcoming Africa’s Flesh Fetish: How A Vegan Diet Saved My Peace Corps Service"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

By Just a Pack<\/a> contributor Amy Benson<\/a><\/p>\n

\"1662016_10101470037390136_1467249880_n\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u200bI\u2019d read before coming that meat was a big deal, had steeled myself for potential hunger, awkward encounters, wider hips. Had attempted to comfort my previously \u200b\u200bpescatarian, juice-obsessed self with the idea that it would be fresh, free roaming, grass fed – that the African version of myself, steeped in pink sunsets and newly barefoot, wouldn’t mind.<\/p>\n

\u200bBotswana\"1379611_10101271245171336_37288503_n\"<\/a> exports only two things to any meaningful degree and these are diamonds and beef. Beef, flesh, chicken heads – these are things I\u2019d read about, had prepared for. What I was not prepared for was that\u00a0my first meal in this country would, indeed, include meat but that that meat would plop out of a faded red tin that read TEXAN BEEF and that this food product, in all of its gelatinous spam-like resilience,\u00a0would hold the shape of its tin casing on my plate, which was also adorned with a mountain of dry white rice and a generous puddle of ketchup.<\/p>\n

\u200bThe Peace Corps. I\u2019d joined the Peace Corps and when one does this, she agrees to 27 months of limited options. In preparing to come, I understood this abstractly, assigned its significance to a future me,\u00a0entertained images of myself tending to a garden; tossing grain to fat hens whose eggs I would gingerly collect into a basket; gathering firewood on which to place boiling pots of fresh beans. My imaginings\u00a0failed\u00a0to take into account, not only that I can\u2019t make a proper fire, but the reality on the ground for much of Sub Saharan Africa, and for much of the developing world, and that is this: when you don\u2019t have enough money to comfortably feed and otherwise support your family, nutrition takes a back seat to sustenance and processed, sugary foods are not only cheaper than more wholesome options, they\u2019re a quick shot of serotonin to the soul, something to get excited about in a place where little changes and the future is less planned for than it is tuned out.<\/p>\n

\u200bIn the simplest terms, when I moved to Botswana 13 months ago I didn’t\u00a0know how to feed myself and I persisted in not knowing for months. It\u00a0isn’t that I was unable to acquire food. It was that being fed is not\u00a0the same thing as being nourished; that I didn’t (and don\u2019t) live with\u00a0electricity and, therefore, a refrigerator; that small markets have\u00a0been replaced by South African chain grocery stores, which hawk sugar,\u00a0salt and MSG in plastic packages.<\/p>\n

In my first months in Botswana, each afternoon, I would schlep my way\u00a0home through the sandy Kalahari Desert and collapse into my house\u00a0feeling so vaguely, but wholly unwell the only thing I could think to\u00a0do was to sit in a bucket of cool water and try not to think. I was\u00a0never satisfied, my head pounded, my nights of sleep had deteriorated\u00a0into a series of irritating nocturnal naps and I was puffing out like\u00a0a swollen sea sponge (a fact everyone in my village delighted in\u00a0informing me of).<\/p>\n

\"1236337_10101210568472926_1089447538_n\"<\/a>Never before had I had this much consistent control over my diet\u00a0(read: my health): there are no restaurants for miles in any\u00a0direction, and\u00a0yet I was weak, dizzy and tired nearly all of the time.\u00a0This was summer in Sub Saharan Africa and I am Irish and this is a bad\u00a0combination, but the heat had nothing on the manic way in which I was\u00a0trying to stay fed. With no means to refrigerate things and the\u00a0necessity that I plan, food-wise, for hours outside of my house\u00a0working in the eternal blaze, I boiled eggs (which it turns out don\u2019t\u00a0need to be refrigerated at all); I panicked about not eating enough\u00a0vegetables and stuffed enormous trays of boiled beets into plastic\u00a0containers; I carried a jar of salt and sugar-infused peanut butter\u00a0with me everywhere. In this way, I tried to avoid starvation away from\u00a0my home, which would inevitably mean being tempted to eat boiled cow\u00a0intestines or fried liver, or buying a miniature sleeve of biscuits\u00a0the ingredient list of which would boast gluten, unhydrogenated\u00a0vegetable oil, salt, sugar, yeast, raising agents and flour improver.<\/p>\n

\u200bFor me, the irony of my new found misery was that I had not only\u00a0actively participated in the act of transplanting myself from New York\u00a0City to a speck of a place in the middle of the desert in Africa, I\u00a0had fought and competed for the pleasure. I knew, again abstractly, as\u00a0if this was going to all fade into a movie I\u2019d once seen, that it\u00a0would not be easy, that likely I would not embody my most graceful\u00a0self, but these first months, perhaps four of them, I was in a sort of\u00a0crisis that is only clear to me now, in retrospect. Everything about\u00a0my life existed in its most extreme expression: the isolation, the\u00a0boiling air, the inwardness of my thoughts. I couldn’t cope and if I\u00a0was going to have any chance of finishing this thing, I needed a body\u00a0that was on my side. I needed to find a way to get healthy.<\/p>\n

I had been a vegetarian off and on for years, but this was motivated,\u00a0rather thoughtlessly, both by mere habit and by the desire to be thin,\u00a0the sort of disordered eating that has defined, unfortunately,\u00a0generations of young American women. But here, in this desert by\u00a0myself, I had to learn to relate to my body in, what was for me, a new\u00a0way. To be on the same team, to love it so that it would love me back\u00a0and, for me, this has meant a thoughtful and plant-based diet rooted\u00a0in my health and how it makes me feel, rather than look. Veganism. I\u00a0began reading about plant-based nutrition (Brendan Brazier\u2019s Thrive\u00a0may have saved my life or at the least my Peace Corps service), about\u00a0how much stress I was likely inflicting on my body via my rickety\u00a0diet, about cortisol and its impact on restful sleep, about where to\u00a0find iron, calcium and electrolytes within my food – things I had\u00a0likely consumed by default in the States and here had to intentionally\u00a0seek out. I discovered that I was allergic to foods I\u2019d been consuming\u00a0for years and filled bowls with raw vegetables, seeds, nuts, beans,\u00a0fruit and grains. Things got better for me after that.<\/p>\n

My health is still a challenge in this dusty place, my most recent\u00a0crises being a dime-sized pink dot on my back that looks just like the\u00a0image of a tick bite Google shows me, sinus trouble from all of the\u00a0dust the donkey carts kick up and the endless effort to stave off heat\u00a0stroke. But I can sleep now. Meals satisfy me, my chronic hunger is\u00a0gone, as well as its accompanying headache. I walk in through my front\u00a0door instead of bursting. It\u2019s hard to say what life will be like when\u00a0I finally leave\u00a0Botswana<\/span>, when I pack up my few things and board a bus\u00a0for who knows where, but I can\u2019t imagine that my new diet, unlike the\u00a0pink sunsets and barefoot walks to work, won\u2019t be something I get to\u00a0keep.<\/p>\n

\"1174671_10101212017848366_2106808823_n\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Just a Pack contributor Amy Benson \u200bI\u2019d read before coming that meat was a big deal, had steeled myself for potential hunger, awkward encounters, wider hips. Had attempted to comfort my previously \u200b\u200bpescatarian, juice-obsessed self with the idea that it would be fresh, free roaming, grass fed – that the African version of myself, steeped in pink sunsets and newly barefoot, wouldn’t mind. \u200bBotswana exports only two things to any meaningful degree and these are diamonds and beef. Beef, flesh, chicken heads – these are things I\u2019d read about, had prepared for. What I was not prepared for was that\u00a0my first meal in this country would, indeed, include meat but that that meat would plop out of a faded red tin that read TEXAN BEEF and that this food product, in all of its gelatinous spam-like resilience,\u00a0would hold the shape of its tin casing on my plate, which was also adorned with a mountain of dry white rice and a generous puddle of ketchup. \u200bThe Peace Corps. I\u2019d joined the Peace Corps and when one does this, she agrees to 27 months of limited options. In preparing to come, I understood this abstractly, assigned its significance to a future […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77557,"featured_media":10657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,29,3],"tags":[1850,1851,87,2333,2341,16],"class_list":["post-10654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-travel","category-vegan","tag-africa","tag-botswana","tag-diet","tag-health","tag-travel","tag-veganism"],"yoast_head":"\nOvercoming Africa's Flesh Fetish: How A Vegan Diet Saved My Peace Corps Service - HappyCow<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.happycow.net\/blog\/overcoming-africas-flesh-fetish-how-a-vegan-diet-saved-my-peace-corps-service\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Overcoming Africa's Flesh Fetish: How A Vegan Diet Saved My Peace Corps Service - HappyCow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Just a Pack contributor Amy Benson \u200bI\u2019d read before coming that meat was a big deal, had steeled myself for potential hunger, awkward encounters, wider hips. Had attempted to comfort my previously \u200b\u200bpescatarian, juice-obsessed self with the idea that it would be fresh, free roaming, grass fed – that the African version of myself, steeped in pink sunsets and newly barefoot, wouldn’t mind. \u200bBotswana exports only two things to any meaningful degree and these are diamonds and beef. Beef, flesh, chicken heads – these are things I\u2019d read about, had prepared for. What I was not prepared for was that\u00a0my first meal in this country would, indeed, include meat but that that meat would plop out of a faded red tin that read TEXAN BEEF and that this food product, in all of its gelatinous spam-like resilience,\u00a0would hold the shape of its tin casing on my plate, which was also adorned with a mountain of dry white rice and a generous puddle of ketchup. \u200bThe Peace Corps. I\u2019d joined the Peace Corps and when one does this, she agrees to 27 months of limited options. 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