The correct answer is dugong which I didn’t eat on account of the mermaid thing.* ‘You ate opossum?!’ I hear you gasp. Yep, tastes like chicken’s rubbery cousin. ‘You ate turtle?!’ Yes, but I didn’t know until after and I cried a little. ‘YOU ATE SPAM?!’ Yes, even though I don’t know what animal Spam formerly was. Nor does anyone.
As a former vegan (a vegetarian minus all the fun stuff that is left once you take away meat) this has been fairly traumatic for me. Deliciously traumatic. I did try and stay vegetarian when I first arrived but after several months of nothing but rice and kumara I looked in the mirror and saw my weak pale sickly zombie doppelganger and then had a dream where a can of tuna gave me permission to eat it. So I did.
But the main reason I fell off the vego-wagon was because meat is such an important part of culture here. Fishing is a central livelihood for people. Killing a pig, dugong or turtle is a rarity, done only for very special feasts like Christmas, baptisms or funerals, and nothing says ‘outsider’ like refusing such a special meal. So this is a sacrifice I am willing to make. And everyone is happy – I’m happy, the community is happy, my dream tuna is happy, and, most of all, my body is happy because after several months of nothing but carbs I would wake up in the night to hear my digestive system crying ‘fibre... FIBRE!’ in a small, pitiful voice. Everyone wins! ...Except the opossums, dugongs, turtles and Spamimals.
Until next time!
*Fun fact. Did you know that dugongs are the basis for the mermaid myth? Dugongs – or sea cows – have visible, ahem, ‘lady lumps’, and apparently homesick, seasick, lovesick, landsick scurvy-ridden sailors saw them from a distance and thought they looked like fish-tailed ladies. If anyone has seen a dugong’s face they will be offended on behalf of women everywhere.
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