All aid workers are vegetarians to some degree. Some go veg when offered grubs and testicles; others when the only option is bush meat.
There are a few of us full-time vegetarians out there but we are a marginalised – one might even say a vulnerable – group. We go hungry, we have wind, we over-pay at buffets and group dinners. We host, per capita, more parasites than every other group of human beings on the planet.
We also suffer stigma and discrimination. “That must be why you look so old for your age,” observe people in the village. And: “This explains your infertility.” Or, my personal favourite: “But how does your husband survive if you won’t cook him meat?”
Villagers want to know if tomatoes count as meat; humanitarians want to know why vegetarians are pretentious and – with righteous fire in their eyes – why we are culturally insensitive. This last accusation is absurd, and I absolutely reject it on behalf of veggies everywhere. The fact is, villagers LOVE vegetarian foreigners. We are the universal favourite.
Why? Because we are wondrously inexpensive. Anyone and everyone can invite us over without feeling pressured to serve us a pound of flesh. Our finickiness destroys class barriers.
As a vegetarian, and hence the cheapest foreigner a villager will ever meet, I am invited everywhere. Everyone wants to be my friend. Everyone wants me to come over and drink tea and then, when it’s mealtime, eat air. Or cassava, which is kind of the same thing.
I wouldn’t say that I proselytise, exactly, but I have claimed that the veg lifestyle makes one immune to hexes, spells, asymmetric fingernails and vampirism.
Of course, the life of a vegetarian aid worker is not all a bed of kale. It means days and weeks of eating nothing but peanuts, or deep-fried starch, and then fielding that eternal village question: “If you don’t eat meat, then how come you’re so fat?” It means avoiding all foods with a crust, a pocket, or more than two ingredients, because everyone lies about what’s inside.
Do you know how many times I’ve been served sautéed blood cubes? Bone marrow? Strained sheep fat? Do you know how many people think it doesn’t count as meat if there’s only “a little bit” added for flavour?
Vegetarians get confused with people who don’t like to eat. You go to a wedding in the village and there is an entire pig roasting but for you, the veggie, the host – with a smile! –presents a cucumber. You order the vegetarian meal and the airline serves you plain rice (with a bit of cucumber). A party is thrown in your honour but the only thing you can eat is the avocado salad – and the omnivores scoff that down before you can get to it, leaving you with the plate of shrivelled cucumber slices.
This act of omnivore selfishness brings me to the heart of the matter: are we really sure a human life is so much more precious than the life of, say, a chinchilla? Think about it. The gentle, herbivore chinchilla does not practice genocide. It does not make itself president for life. It does not double-count beneficiaries. A chinchilla has never siphoned petrol out of an aid worker’s truck. It stands a good chance of being reincarnated as Angelina Jolie.
Vegetarians who are only ad hoc, on the other hand, cannot be re-born as Brangelina, not even if they are humanitarians, because they have damaged their karma with bacon.
Happily, omnivores can strengthen their capacity to achieve nirvana (eg a UN consultancy with no deliverables, a blank cheque from Bill Gates) by mainstreaming vegetarianism: ensure vegetarians are represented on all office party planning committees; begin each staff meeting with a prayer for the world’s fish; and set vegetarian-sensitive performance objectives, such as “learn how many calories are in a cucumber” and “demonstrate three simple ways to make a raw vegetable delicious”.
I believe that together, as vegetarians of all degrees, we aid workers can make the world a safer place for chinchillas.
Dara Passano is a pseudonym.
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