Post 4 Finding Food

At first we found living a little difficult and also rather strange. The town had no market, most of the townsfolk having their small chacos (farms) out in the country where they grew their rice, yuca, bananas and corn. It was a matter of finding out who had brought in something extra for sale and visiting their house in the hope of obtaining some.

Meat

This being cattle country, generally someone killed a beast daily. Sometimes it was possible to ascertain the previous evening in whose yard the slaughter was to be carried out in the early hours of the next morning; otherwise we would follow the sound of dogs barking as they gathered from all over the town to get some scraps. 

The animal's throat was cut with a machete and slaughter began more or less where it fell. Soon the customers were walking off home with a lump of warm flesh dangling on the end of a wire hook. Frequently there was dirt, grit, gravel and even manure that had to be removed from the meat, and then it was washed well and prepared for the midday meal. 

With no refrigeration of any kind, the meat would be rotten by noon if there were a delay in cooking it. Being so freshly butchered, it was very tough and tasteless so later, when our goods arrived, the meat mincer was in constant use. Green vegetables were practically unobtainable, but in season there were plenty of bananas and other tropical fruit, as long as we could locate someone who had brought them in from their chaco.

Reflection by Alinda and Juanita(2026)

As adults in modern Australia,where Asian vegetables are prolific, we often feel saddened by their struggle to grow food in El Beni.

Unknown to them, cultures in other tropical areas of the world grew many green vegetable varieties but, of course, the lack of communication and interaction between tropical neighbouring countries north of Australia prohibited this knowledge from being useful to them. 

The tropical diet of the Bolivian lowlands, and the lifestyle was vastly different to the Andean highlands where many foods recognisable to them were abundant, and where they had lived for several years prior to San Joaquin.