Do you want cheese with that guinea pig?
The challenge of local food on international mission trips
In two weeks I’ll join a group of seven other people from our church on a mission trip to Peru. Most of the team will go to Chepen, a small town near the northwestern coast, and do ladies’ ministry, discipleship ministry and sports ministry with a mission church there that our church has partnered with for several years. I’ll be with the smaller portion of the team that will be about 100 miles south of Chepen in the large city of Trujillo. My job will be to teach the faculty and students of the Peruvian Baptist Seminary along with pastors and lay leaders of surrounding churches the basics of church leadership and discipleship. Mission trips like this one are serious and urgent because the gospel is serious and urgent. But they’re also full of joy and laughter in new experiences and surprising situations—especially when it comes to local food. You’ll see what I mean in this post, taken from my first mission trip to Peru several years ago.
Every mission trip includes eating local food—an experience that sounds good in theory but takes on a different meaning when, say, your Moroccan host puts goat stew in front of you with eyeballs swimming in the gravy.
You pretty much have to eat it. The people you go to serve in distant countries and cultures far different from your own often show their appreciation by serving you dishes unique to their culture. To refuse would be offensive, so one of the informal rules of dining etiquette when on a mission trip is to eat what’s put in front of you.
If you’re in Kenya and monkey is on the menu, dig in. India? Get ready for curry so fiery that it will leave the roof of your mouth in tatters. I was once in Thailand and was served little squares of congealed blood—from what animal I hadn’t a clue. I smiled, popped them in my mouth then spit them into my napkin as soon as no one was looking.
In Peru, the food is guinea pig.
You read that right. The favorite food here is guinea pig. Not the cute little things sold by pet stores as souped-up hamsters but larger animals akin to rabbits. They’re native to the region and modern Peruvians inherited a taste for them from their Incan ancestors.
The local name for guinea pig is “Cuey,” a word that somehow suits the feeling you get when you think about eating one. It sounds like “Ooey”—what a little girl might say when she sees something nasty—or “Cooties”—what a little boy might run away from if that little girl gets too close. Both Americanisms pretty well capture my thoughts about eating guinea pig for dinner.
You see guinea pigs whenever you’re in a restaurant because it looks like every other waiter is carrying one to a hungry diner. It’s not known as the national dish for nothing. From what I can tell, the animal is fried whole then paired with yuca fries (think heavier and denser french fries) and red onions. While eating lunch yesterday I saw the guy at the table next to me chewing on one covered with cheese, prompting me to ask my Peruvian host, “Hey! You want cheese with that Cuey?” He didn’t seem to think I was funny.
I don’t have a good feeling about any of this because our mission team has one notable shortcoming. None of us brought our wives. And without women around to restrain our natural instincts, men almost always get into trouble. I can imagine that before we leave the country we’ll descend to Lord of the Flies depths and challenge one another to a Cuey-eating contest. That’s a game I’ll be happy to lose.
Don’t get me wrong. This country is easy to love and our Peruvian brothers and sisters are awesome people. They’re passionate about their faith, fun to be with and gracious hosts. I couldn’t ask for a better experience than serving the Lord alongside of them for these ten days—even if their national dish doesn’t connect with my American tastes.
But maybe one day the shoe will be on the other foot. What if my Peruvian friends were to visit me here in South Carolina sometime in the future and I wanted them to sample our local cuisine just as I sampled theirs? And what better place to give them the full South Carolina culinary experience than in the little town of Salley for the annual Chitlin’ Strut?
My double take when first seeing a platter full of fried guinea pig wouldn’t hold a candle to their startled response to a steaming pile of hog guts pulled out of a vat of boiling water and slopped onto a paper plate.
One of them might even remember my ill-timed joke back in Peru and turn the tables on me and ask, “Hey! You want cheese with those chitlins?”
40 years ago, I was visiting a friend in Littlestown, PA which is the south central part of PA and 4 miles from Emmitsburg MD. While visiting, I got involved in the butchering of a cow, which I admired his skill and efficiency of his craft.
As lunch approach, he offered me to join his family for a very simple farmer's lunch. Water, sandwiches and good conversation was on the lunch menu for that day.
My friend passed around one of their favorite side dish....pickled cow tongue. Not to hurt the feelings at the table, I choose the smallest piece of tongue from the plate that was being passed.
With reservation I ate the small piece of tongue, as every eye at the table was watching me and waiting for a reaction. Pickled cow tongue has the consistency of softened brie cheese after being baked in the oven. The pickling spice was vinegar based with a very strong plethora of pickling spices. I struggled with the tongue as a sheepish smile came to my face while chewing. "It's an acquired taste", was my response when asked of my opinion of the tongue.
Three days later, as the tongue was still settling in my stomach, was belching the taste of that tongue and the spices associated with it.
As I reflect on that story of years past, I would rather eat the guinea pig, with or without the cheese than to eat pickled cow tongue !