Fried Sheep Blood, Zombies, and How to Butcher a Cow

If you have a week stomach when it comes to dead animals, I would advise not reading this post or looking at the pictures. I use to be very bothered by seeing dead animals or animal parts. I was a vegetarian for eight years! …Then I joined the Peace Corps and that had to change.

When I applied for the Peace Corps something that was made very clear during the application process was that no matter what country I was placed in, I would be fed strange food of different animal parts that I would not be use to eating and I had to be willing to give everything a try because in most countries it is very rude to deny food. So coming to Peru, I knew that I would be given strange food, but what I didn’t know is that I would be fed sheep blood because the thought never occurred to me that people eat that as a main course. But yes, yes indeed I was given fried sheep blood as the main course of a meal this week. The thought alone of even putting sheep blood in my mouth made me want to vomit and watching my family eat it at the table made me feel sick. They could tell that I looked very scared and shocked and they all eagerly waited for me to try it. I didn’t think I was going to be able to even try a tiny bite but after a lot of coaxing, I finally did and the whole family watched my face as I took a tiny bite to see my reaction. I honestly hope that I never have to eat it again but I feel like it’s going to happen since my family raved about how delicious it is and how good it is for you and how in addition to sheep blood they also love to eat chicken blood (“la sangrecita del pollo es bien rico!!”).

Sheep blood...it's what's for dinner. 

I can also now tell you the exact step of how to butcher a cow, a sheep and a pig because as I have mentioned in previous posts, literally right by my house is a meat slaughtering/butchering place in which there are many open spaces and everything is very visible (how convenient right?!). I am not going to lie, I burst into tears when I saw them cut the throat of a pig and listened to it scream and squeal as it quickly lost its life. Thankfully, my site mate was right there with me to give me a shoulder to cry on/laugh together about how “oh my god I can’t believe we just saw that happen”. And now every morning at 6 am when I am woken up by the screech of a dying pig, I can picture in my head what it looks like as it dies….pleasant. I wait the day when this will not bother me anymore!

Cow butchering

Pig torching right after they killed it to get the fur off. After the skin is off they cell it on the street just how it is.

Lets just drain all the animal blood and guts into the river where kids play,  people bathe, and wash clothes....great idea. 

Over the weekend all of the Peace Corps Volunteers in Ancash went to our regional capital in Huaraz for our regional Peace Corps meeting. There are about thirty of us volunteers in Ancash. It was fun to get together and get to hang out with everyone as well as stay a weekend in Huaraz and eat good food that doesn’t consist of strange animal body parts. On Friday night we all dressed up as Zombies and went out on the town. We all got really into it and had a lot of fun. It is a tradition for the Peace Corps Volunteers in Ancash to have dress up themed nights out together. The theory is that everyone already stares at the gringos anyway so might as well dress up crazy and have fun even more fun since people will be staring anyway.