Vegan-ish

As my time here in Madagascar is rapidly drawing to a close, I’ve begun to take stock of the different changes I’ve seen in myself since I left America. I know that many of them won’t become evident until I return home, but one of the main changes that I have already noticed is the way I eat. Simply because of the nature of the food system and culture here, I eat an extremely whole-foods, plant-based diet, with very little meat, dairy, wheat, or processed foods. I’ve sort of become an accidental vegan—most days I’ll cook something that appeals to me, and then realize afterwards that it was unintentionally vegan. I only cook meat about once a month, and then it’s usually ground beef to make burgers with friends. (Incidentally, it’s much healthier than American pre-packaged ground beef because it comes from just one cow, and it’s ground fresh to order, so I see what goes into it.) I could certainly cook more beef if  wanted to, but it’s expensive, and just doesn’t appeal to me that much, honestly. Plus, without running water or even a sink, it’s a bit of a pain to keep things clean. Chicken is even harder to deal with, because if I wanted to eat it, I would need to buy a live chicken, then kill and butcher it, which I am usually too lazy to feel like dealing with. I’ve eaten it a couple times on special occasions, but then I’ve worked out a deal with my neighbor that I buy the chicken, and she’ll cook it for us. But I’ve also found that the things I crave nowadays aren’t really animal products: they’re things like chickpeas (either in hummus, or roasted whole for a snack), or salad greens (whenever I go to the capital, the first thing I buy at the vazaha grocery store is a giant head of lettuce, which I usually consume in one sitting), or good coffee and chocolate. Sure I’ll eat a burger when I get home, but I don’t miss the American meat-centric diet that much, really. And whenever I do a taco night with friends, I’ve realized that I actually prefer eating my homemade refried beans instead of ground beef.

Probably the number one concern that Americans have for vegetarians and vegans is but where do you get your protein from? I’m not sure where this American obsession with protein comes from, but it’s a dangerous myth that only animal products contain protein. It’s in virtually all foods—some more than others—and with a balanced diet of plant foods (I’m not talking about cucumbers all day or plain rice for every meal), it’s easy to get an adequate amount of protein, as well as any other nutrient that our bodies need.  The fascinating documentary Forks Over Knives has an interview with a strictly-vegan mixed martial arts fighter, who says that he fights better and feels healthier when he stays away from all animal products, and has no issues with protein deficiency. I, too, have realized just how much better I feel eating the way I do nowadays, which I suppose is somewhat similar to the famously healthy Asian diet as extolled in The China Study. Whenever I go into a big city and want to splurge on foods that I can’t get at site, like pizza or ice cream, I always feel a bit sick to my stomach afterwards. And whenever I spend time at the Peace Corps training center for meetings or conferences, where they spoil us with macaroni and cheese and other temptingly delicious non-vegan food, I always find myself battling terrible heartburn and regretting what I’d just eaten. Plus, on top of leaving me feeling not-quite-so-hot, these dietary dalliances always leave me about 5 pounds heavier than normal—so my new way of eating definitely has its weight loss/maintenance benefits to boot.

I’ve thought about going strictly vegan when I go home to America, but then I think about all the things I want to keep enjoying even on a limited basis, like Ben & Jerry’s, or cheddar cheese, or poached eggs, or the occasional bacon indulgence. Plus, I love to cook, and I’d hate to look at my treasured recipe binder and realize that I’d need to throw out half of my favorite recipes simply because they contain some meat, eggs, or dairy.  In general, I struggle with the desire to be healthy and eat the way that my body wants, but also retain my identity as (much as I hate the word) a “foodie”—that is, a culinary aficionado, someone who knows how to cook, and who appreciates good ingredients and good food

But then I came across the book VB6 by Mark Bittman, the celebrated New York Times food columnist, in which he outlines a way of eating that is vegan-centric but also gives leeway for enjoying a wide range of animal foods, albeit in small quantities and only at certain times of the day. The “VB6” acronym stands for “vegan before 6:00PM”, which is a plan that Bittman worked out for himself after his doctor diagnosed him with a host of health problems that could only be caused by the occupational hazards of a food writer: decadent restaurant meals, nonstop recipe tasting, and the task of living up to the persona of someone who only eats delicious food. Bittman started eating vegan-only until 6:00, and then after that allowed himself to eat pretty much whatever what he wanted. The reason for the post-6PM timing decision was because he surmised that dinnertime is when we want to relax and indulge after a long day, and it’s easier to eat vegan for breakfast and lunch. After several months of doing this, all of his diet-related health problems were essentially gone, and he has since adopted this as a way of life. So when I read this book, and realized that it was possible to still be a “foodie”-- even a career foodie like Mark Bittman—while trying to eat a largely vegan diet, it sort of became a lightbulb moment for me. I don’t think I will stick to a strictly clock-based system of food allowances like he does, because I’d never want to give up the possibility of eggs or yogurt for breakfast, but I think I will copy his strategy of eating vegan for the majority of my calories, while still allowing myself to eat some animal products.

In addition to reading VB6, I’ve also recently read a few other food-related books that talk about the dangers and detriments of the Standard American Diet. The first was the groundbreaking 1970s book Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé, which exposed the shockingly high environmental cost of producing all the industrial meat that our country so loves, and shows readers how to combine vegetarian foods (by amino acid-matching) to create complete, usable protein. After reading this and seeing the spectrum of inputs required for all animal-based foods—16 pounds of grain are needed to create 1 pound of beef, for example—it reiterated my desire to eat less of them, and confirmed for me that when I do eat animal products, I should aim for them to be on the lower end of the input spectrum: eggs, dairy, chicken, and fish are all better choices than red meat from an environmental impact standpoint.

Another food-related book I recently read was also a groundbreaking work, albeit one from the 2000s: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, which is part diary of Kingsolver’s family’s attempt to grow or raise all their own food for a year, and part dissection of the horrendous impacts of our fossil fuel-dependent system of shipping food around the world to satisfy the American consumer’s demand for any food product, in any location, at any time of year. (Raspberries in Minnesota in January? Do people really shop this way?) It was (and still is) an important work that captured the spirit of the local food movement that really began to pick up steam in the mid-2000s, and although I didn’t get a chance to read it until now, it came out just at the time when I was beginning to get involved in the local food movement in Brooklyn—subscribing to and then helping run a CSA, making weekly pilgrimages to farmers’ markets, and generally beginning to have my own revelations about the beauty of eating locally and seasonally.  Kingsolver is actually pretty against veganism and vegetarianism, because she believes that locally, sustainably, and humanely raised meat is a far better choice than eating processed, GMO soy-based meat substitutes. And I have to say that I agree with her —I don’t believe in the kind of veganism that says it’s better to eat packaged, processed food created who-knows-where instead of a small quantity of well-raised meat and dairy products from a farmer in your zip code.  So in addition to my desire to eat a smaller amount of animal products, I also have a desire to keep my food miles as low as possible.

I will never deny that roast chicken is uncommonly delicious. And I will never stop loving cheese, especially true Vermont cheddar, fresh local goat cheese, or an authentic French camembert. But I also will never deny that eating fewer of these decadent foods is better for my body, and better for the planet as well. The key here is the word fewer—I’m not going to say never. How could I travel to Argentina and not sample their local beef? Or not savor an ice cream cone on a hot summer day? The key for me will be to make these occasional indulgences, not everyday occurrences. But I think viewing these foods as the luxuries that they are helps me to appreciate them more on the rare occasions when I do eat them.

Finally, for anyone curious, here are a couple of sample day’s diets that give a snapshot of how I eat here in Madagascar. In addition to their low amount of animal products, my meals are almost wholly local: the oatmeal, rice paper, olives, Mexican spices, powdered milk, and sardines are the only non-local foods I consumed during those two days. I’m lucky enough to be able to eat extremely locally here (even the soy sauce, cinnamon, coffee, beans, salt, pepper, and sugar are local!) for not very much money, and that’s something I will definitely miss upon my return home.

From December:

Breakfast: oatmeal with cinnamon, peanut butter, and sliced bananas; coffee with a tiny bit of powdered milk

Snack: 2 small mofo balls (fried bread)

Lunch: raw vegan summer rolls with soy-peanut dipping sauce; 10 fresh lychees

Snack: handful of peanuts

Dinner: Greek salad (minus the feta) with sardines; 2 mangoes

From February:

Breakfast: 4 mofo balls (like a small donut), coffee, 1 banana with peanut butter

Snack: piece of cooked breadfuit

Lunch: homefries with fried egg, tomato, and avocado; 1 pocanelle

Dinner: Mexican-spiced beans with rice and avocado; 10 small guava

 

Morondava and the land of the baobabs

It was when the taxi-brousse headed south from Antsirabe and then made a right turn on the RN35 that I realized I’d never ever gone west in Madagascar. Sure, I’d gone west from Tana, but my occidental travels had only ever put me as far as Miarinarivo—which is basically still right smack dab in the middle of the country. This journey, I suddenly realized, would be taking me to a new frontier. 

This new frontier was the town of Morondava, a beach city located on the Mozambique Channel, and the famous baobab trees that live in its surrounding countryside, including the famous “Avenue des Baobabs”. My friend Amy and I had been talking about doing this trip for ages, and after many failed attempts and reschedules,  we at last made it happen this past November. I settled into the taxi-brousse and soon drifted off as we made our way towards the west coast through my uncharted territory, illuminated by one of the brightest full moons I’ve ever seen.

What I awoke to the next morning was a landscape unlike anything I’d ever encountered  in Madagascar. As the sun rose over the reddened countryside still 50km from the coast, my first thought was that it looked much like South Africa, with its dried-up riverbeds and expanses of barren shrubland. Generally it looked more African than anything else I’d seen in Madagascar, which, of course, would make sense being that it’s closer to the actual continent of Africa; perhaps this part of the island was holding on to a souvenir from when the plates shifted and Madagascar was torn from the mainland all those millions of years ago. And then suddenly, the baobabs appeared, dotting all over the landscape. Admittedly I didn’t know what to really expect when it came to viewing these famous trees, and I suppose I didn’t expect to see them outside the famous avenue. But here they were, everywhere, and I couldn’t stop looking at them. To my just-awoken eyes, they looked like massive, earthly anchors, their branches like roots fixing them to the sky.

We arrived in the actual city of Morondava around 8AM, when the oppressive morning heat had already settled in, and then took a pousse-pousse towards the beach, where we found a hotel right on the ocean for $12 a night. Not too shabby. After a changing into cooler clothes we ventured back into town, which was right in the midst of its annual explosion of mangoes. Although we have mangoes in the southeast, the ones from Morondava are different—they are massive, globular fruits that absolutely burst with juice. And when they are in season, they are everywhere, and because they are everywhere, they are cheap.  We bought a small paring knife and stocked up on an armload of mangoes (for 200 AR each, about 10 cents), then proceeded to messily eat them over our hotel sink during the course of our vacation. We also encountered the curiously fuzzy baobab fruit, which I didn’t even know existed, and were able to sample a refreshing glass of baobab jus naturel—definitely a first. Afterwards we returned to our hotel  and went for a swim, my first in the Mozambique Channel. The water was warm like a bath, and reminded me of swimming in the balmy Mediterranean Sea in Ashkelon, Israel on a hot August evening in 2009.

Beautiful sunset on the beach outside our hotel.

 

Not bad for about $12 a night.

And the beachside restaurant gives a fashionable windswept look.

And not only was the water warm, but town itself felt like the hottest place I’d ever been in Madagascar.  Here more than anywhere, the afternoon siesta seems to be a necessity. But despite that, Amy and I decided that we really, unequivocally liked the town of Morondava. Everyone was friendly, we never heard shouts of vazaha!, and a lot of people knew and appreciated Peace Corps. Amy bought a silver bracelet from a local jeweler, and when he heard us speaking Malagasy he surmised that we were Peace Corps volunteers, and then regaled us with how much he loved PCVs and insisted that we stay in his large house next time we were in town. But one of the most fun things we did was a favor for Shayla, a Peace Corps volunteer who used to serve in Morondava. After receiving a digital request from her, we stopped by her old house to talk to the local kids and see if they remembered her. They did, and so we took photos with them to send to Shayla as a little ‘hello’ from her old home. She told me that it completely made her day to get those photos, and I can only hope that someone does that for me after I finish my service, when I'll have moments of feeling like I left half of my heart in Vangaindrano. 

Our hotel, Les Bouganvilliers, had an alfresco restaurant where you could sit and have breakfast a few meters from the waves, so the next morning I splurged on a pot of their strong coffee (only about $1, but that’s 10 times the price that I usually pay for coffee on the street) and snuck in a bag of street mofo (fried bread) to make it an affordable breakfast. As I sat sipping my coffee I watched giant-sailed schooners off in the distance, foregrounded by Malagasy fishermen in homemade ‘sailboats’- which are really just dugout canoes with plastic sheeting for sails. It was a reminder that the Western world’s luxuries and comfortable realities are still far off, even though I sometimes catch of glimpse of them-- like when a gleaming 4x4 filled with tourists passes my taxi-brousse that’s broken down on the side of the road.

Shortly after I sat down, a waitress from the hotel stopped by to ask if I wanted to order any food. “Oh no thanks”, I said as I hid the bag of mofo balls under the table, “mbola tsy mosare iaho” (I’m not hungry yet). But forgetting that I was hundreds of kilometers away from my town, I’d automatically used the Antesaka word for “hungry” when I should have used the officiel word since I was no longer in the Sud Est. I apologized and repeated myself in officiel, saying that I actually lived in Vangaindrano and spoke Antesaka. The waitress whizzed back to my table and exclaimed “I’m from there! I was born in Vangaindrano!”, before sitting down and chatting with me for the next 10 minutes. So there I was, practically as far away as I could be from my town, yet experiencing that warm connection that can only come from a shared idea of home. 

Amy and I arranged a trip to visit the famous Avenue des Baobabs on our last day in Morondava, hiring a driver with an ancient cherry-red Renault to take us there and back. We had another comical language moment when a gendarme stopped the car along the main road and kept saying the word “apelasoa” to us. Neither of us knew what it meant and were beginning to get concerned that he was making some kind of demand, when finally he said it in English (“beautiful woman”) and we realized that he was just another gendarme being creepy. Sigh. Some things don’t change no matter where you go on the island.  

 

We had left the town of Morondava in the late afternoon and arrived soon after at the majestic Avenue des Baobabs, which at that point of the day was simply just another dusty dirt road being traveled by farmers herding cows and kids driving oxen carts. Stopping to take a few photos, we then kept driving and stopping to see the masses of baobab trees all around, including the famous “Lover’s Baobab”, so-called because it is actually two trees intertwined together.

 

At last, I got the obligatory Peace Corps Madagascar photo at the Avenue des Baobabs.

This kid and his sister were wrangling (abusing) chameleons and trying to get tourists to give them money. Later, some Madagascar National Parks guides told them to stop abusing the animals-- they got a very stern talking to!

Our driver and our chariot for the baobab trip: an old cherry-red Renault.

After making the rounds and seeing probably hundreds of different baobabs, each of them magnificent and reminding me of reading Le Petit Prince in 8^th grade French class, we drove back towards the Avenue and joined the quickly-growing throng of tourists waiting for legendary sunset to begin. I’m not one for touristy things, but I do have to say that this is a spectacle whose fame is well-warranted. The sun sets at just the right spot behind the trees, and the light suddenly changes to transform the Avenue into one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen in my life, a truly otherworldly congregation of sun and sky and land. There is simply nothing else like it. I took photo after photo after photo, each one better than the next, because the scene just kept getting more and more beautiful. Standing in a field adjacent to the baobabs amongst tourists from all over the globe, all of us reverent and awestruck by these mighty trees, it hit me how amazing it was that these trees are powerful enough to draw people from all over the world to visit them. They stand there, unique and mysterious, and truly are, as I once heard them described, mother trees.

I've seen a lot of beautiful sights in my life, but this truly blew me away.

One final sunset picture to remember Morondava by.