The person organizing our trip to Haiti wrote, asking if anyone in the group was vegetarian. I responded:
From: Me
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2006 8:28 AM
To: Her
Subject: Re: Are there any vegetarians in the group
Very hesitantly I'll admit that yes, Jen and I are nominally
vegetarian, though we eat fish as well.
That said, we talked about this last night, and the reason we're
going on this trip is to help out, not to be any sort of additional
burden. If our odd dietary preference presents any sort of
difficulty or trouble at all, we'll both happily and gratefully eat
what's given to us.
So in this one case, yes, but please don't make any extra effort
trying to find special meals for us.
She wrote this back:
From: Her
Subject: RE: Are there any vegetarians in the group
Date: April 30, 2006 8:58:39 PM EDT
To: Me
Hi Chris,
I know where you are coming from. I too am a "nominal vegetarian" who
eats fish. The only reason I asked is one of the places we are staying
specifically asks this question. I have never said anything to the
people in Fondwa about my food preferences, because there is always rice
and beans and vegetables served at most meals and I have not found it an
issue. Vegetarians do quite well in Haiti because of the limited meat
resources. I actually became a vegetarian after spending a couple of
years traveling to Haiti. Remind me to tell you my Haiti pig slaughter
story...that will make anyone a vegetarian...or at least a "nominal
vegetarian." My husband says I don't eat things that you can hear
screaming when you kill it (I never have heard a fish scream to date).
Well, I am sure this is more information than you wanted.
So yeah, that’s a decent summary. I don’t eat things where you can hear screaming when you kill them. As a rough n’ ready, functional definition of my dietary preferences, that works.
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