If anything, there is beer

When Kent and I went to Africa in 2005, we spent a night in a small village somewhere in the middle of Burkina Faso. Kent wasn’t feeling well, so I went alone to dinner with our friends and guides, Gehrt and Emmanuel. In the village where we had dinner, the power was by generator, and there were no menus. Essentially, like many places in Bali, you ate whatever they happened to be preparing. When I peered into the kitchen window, all I could see was a soup pot with chicken feet sticking out of it.

Gehrt joked that Madame Dauphine, whose home and restaurant we were sitting in, founded the slow food movement, and indeed, we sat there over an hour with our beers waiting for our food to be served. By the time our food did arrive, the generator had been turned off to save power, so we sat and ate and drank in the dark. Gehrt said, this was actually a good thing, that often in such places you don’t want to see what you are eating.

What I ate – I assumed was a baguette with chicken and some kind of sauce over the chicken. However, for a chicken, the meat was rather tough, a bit stringy, and I found a bone here and there. I also pulled a feather or two out of my mouth.

I had never been so glad to have beer to wash my dinner down with in my life.

The next day as we were driving to another village, a strange and ugly bird crossed the road. It looked something like a small turkey with an unfortunate dash of rooster thrown in. I asked what it was.

Emmanuel, turned around in the front seat to face me and said, “A guinea fowl. You know what that is. You ate it last night.”

My stomach turned just a little.

The other night in Bali, we were driving back from an Earth Day celebration. We thought we’d stop along the way for some take out to eat once we got home. In a village, we saw an open air market and food stalls, all preparing satay.

We loved having satay in Singapore and often found it was a cheap and satisfying meal. Kent ordered two orders and paid two dollars. When we got home, Kent immediately started eating while I got the beer and poured it into glasses. I grabbed a stick and took a bite, just as Kent told me, “So I asked the guy what kind of meat this was as I was watching him slice it off.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“Baa….” Kent said.

“Goat?”

Maybe it was the sauce. Maybe it was that the meat was kind of tough and chewy. Maybe it was that Je ne sais quoi sensation where you can’t get the food out of your mouth fast enough. I put the stick down.

I thought I like adventure. I like trying new things. And sometimes, I like having beer for dinner.