In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food by Allen Stewart Lee

Author:Allen, Stewart Lee [Allen, Stewart Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780307415677
Amazon: B000XU4SIC
Barnesnoble: B000XU4SIC
Goodreads: 9432733
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2002-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Smoked Green Makaku

It’s been ten years since I took a rusty barge down the Congo River, but the memories remain vivid. Like the moment I realized my dorm cabin was doubling as the boat’s brothel. Or the time our captain lost his temper and deliberately drove the boat aground for three days. Or the sweltering hot rooms below deck where stowaways were hung from their wrists and whipped. But it’s the expressions of the smoked monkeys that I remember best. Faces contorted in an agonizing howl, lips blackened from smoke, eye sockets charred and empty. Smoked primate is the nouvelle cuisine of Central Africa and every day dugout canoes pulled up out of the endless jungle to unload stacks of them for delivery to the marketplace in Kisangani. By the end of the trip the decks were covered with what looked like piles of withered children curled up in fetal position. Occasionally someone would tear off an arm to make a bit of soup.

I didn’t realize then that I was witnessing the birth of a culinary trend that many believe will finally lead to the extermination of mankind’s closest relatives. Primates like chimps and apes have been on endangered species lists for many decades, but their numbers had stabilized until a recent breakdown in traditional food taboos put them back on the fast track for oblivion. “If the taste for bushmeat continues to spread at its current pace,” says Anthony Rose of the Institute for Conservation Education, “all African apes and most other nonhuman primates may soon be threatened with extinction.” Hundreds of wildlife organizations have recently made the issue a top priority, including famed ape specialist Jane Goodall, who has predicted the extinction of wild apes within fifty years if the culinary fad continues.

The problem began with logging companies sending foreign workers into the deepest parts of the African jungle. Keeping their workers fed in these areas is extraordinarily complicated. So to economize and maximize profits, many of these companies simply gave their workers guns to hunt “bushmeat” like gorillas, chimps, gazelles, anteaters, and whatever else they could find. Many of these animals have always been on the local menu, but most tribes considered primates taboo because of their obvious kinship to humans. Seeing foreigners munching on monkey chops for the last few decades, however, has normalized this as food. “You must come to my house,” one of my fellow passengers used to urge. “My mother, she makes the best monkey!” (“Ma mere, elle fait le mieux singe!”) This local consumption has recently been exacerbated by a growing export market. The chimp jerky on my boat, for instance, was destined for the second-largest city in the Congo, Kisangani, so it could be shipped to places like Brussels, where African expatriates willingly pay up to $20 for a plate of Ma’s smoked green makaku stew. The lure of this easy cash, combined with the local consumption and better guns, is causing slaughters in numbers unimaginable in the recent past. Some

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