Ian, Food, and Making Things Work

Dear Ian, Happy Birthday, dear son,

Lecheon Baboy-Roast pig. Big time delicacy

Okay, so it isn’t hard to guess what the topic of your birthday blog will be:  of course food. Oh we have run into some interesting stuff, not so much because there is astonishing cuisine here, but because they use and are willing to eat things that in America people would never consider eating except in barrios in big cities where people of foreign cultures gather.

Blood pudding with intestines

It makes you wonder about cultural norms.  Things that are taboo in the mainstream US culture are everyday here.  Things that an American would not bat an eye at would be frowned on here.  It’s so interesting, because neither is intrinsically bad or good.  Our culture has just imbued it with what we come to believe is inherent, natural goodness or badness.  Let’s take for example pig blood.  Now most Americans would just plain blanch at the thought of eating pig blood.  They might even faint if they thought they’d actually have to eat it.  But here, the pig is killed, the blood is collected, the pudding or sausage is made and everyone enjoys it.  And why not?  I guess we have images of vampires, or remnants of our Judeao sensitivity regarding the dietary regulations in the law of Moses, but if you think about it, those have no basis in modern fact, unless you maintain Kosher standards.  The reason we don’t eat pig blood is just that we have been taught it’s gross. But what if it’s NOT gross?  What if it is no more gross that pig muscle, or cow milk?

She is really smiling

The baboy goes really fast

We found your own personal store

I am singing happy birthday

That brings me to the flip side.  Things here that people don’t like, that in the U.S. are normal.  Well I shouldn’t say, “don’t like” I should say, “Don’t get.”  Let’s take for example bread. Filipinos eat lots of bread.  They have these little bakeries on every corner, sometimes several in a block.  They sell all sorts of snacky breads, with maybe some coconut, or a filling.  They even sell loaves of white sandwich bread.  But in their mind, bread is not part of any actual food group.  They will eat a sandwich, but never for a meal.  A meal must include rice, and bread is NOT a valid substitute.  If for example I know that I and a local auxiliary leader will be away from home traveling over lunch time, I cannot pack a lunch that consists of a PB &J and a piece of fruit.  They will eat that, but then will insist on stopping at a road side calderia to order a plastic bag of rice and another of some rice topping.  Bread is for snack only, and meals are hot and they include rice—there is no compromise on that, no matter how far from home and how inconvenient. It seems strange to me that people who claim to have to go without food sometimes for lack of funds will also not consider bread as a real food. But then, I don’t think of pig blood as a real food either.

At the pig meat market

We served this to some branch members, they loved it.

a local favorite-baby squid

Mom learning how to de-bone a milk fish

To market, to market to sell a live pig. Pig snout cut out.

Bar-B-que chicken feet, ummm

Here is my confession E, and maybe if you come to visit while we are here, you can convince me otherwise:  I have yet to try pig blood or balut.  Just can’t do it.  No matter how philosophical I get about the whole thing, no matter how intellectual an argument I present to myself, I just can’t get over the yuck factor.  Gratefully any time we have been offered blood pudding, it had been buffet style and I have not felt obliged to eat it.  Trust me I have eaten things that I would consider almost in the same category, but that one I’ve been able to avoid.

What you might ask have I not avoided? Well, I have eaten pig face, sometimes translated from Visaya into English as pig mask.

At the meat market

Double Banana, very common.

Needless to say there is nothing wasted here.  Everything has a use.  It seems as though that is just how God wants things to be.  Everything gets used.  There is a lot of your spirit here, the spirit of inventiveness.  The Filipino people are so amazingly resourceful.  When there is a need they just create or patch something together to make it work.  The gospel seems to work like that and more.  There is a foundation of happiness.  Making things work through the gospel.  Not forcing but allowing the flow of the gospel to take hold in people’s lives.  We are seeing that happen to a man who was the first district president (like a stake president) in the Tanjay district.  He and his wife have been inactive for about 10 years.  They are beginning to grasp the gospel again in their lives and they are feeling a real sense of love toward their family and are more focused and happier in their lives.  The husband is a district school administrator for the province and his wife is an environmental engineer who works in a city just to the south of us.
Ian, we have loved watching you make things work--as a boy, a teenager, a missionary, a husband.  You have a knack for calmly taking the materials at hand and creating out of them something that will make life easier, more efficient, more pleasant, whether it be food, music, a computer program or a relationship. You are amazingly creative in so many facets, and creativity is an element of your divinity.   

We wish you a happy birthday!  We will see you for your next one. Yippie!