101. Soup and Rice

101.

Soup and Rice

Here is a thatch-roofed village beside the road.

One of the huts is a restaurant where we order bowls of the Liberian favorite, “Soup and Rice”.

The “soup” is a sort of stew, which contains anything edible, and the “rice” is plain steamed rice.

There are smoked monkey carcasses hanging outside the restaurant with their pathetic little blackened paws looking exactly like baby human’s hands.

I assume the soup and rice we eat contains monkey meat though I don’t much like to think about it because such food seems too much like a cannibal feast to me.

I know my negative reaction is only a culturally induced prejudice and the long-time missionaries with me eat with gusto.

I carry some emergency rations in the form of tinned sardines and a small bag of peanuts in case I cannot eat what my hosts provide.

After a long ride on hard dirt (the missionaries call it laterite) we arrive the end of the bulldozed road: the village of Fishtown.

Fishtown is the end of civilization as I have known it and the beginning of civilization as the native jungle-dwelling Liberians know it.

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