The Bizarre Truth (31 page)

The capullo had a few more hours to go, and I was confused about what we would do and eat in the meantime. I watched as a few women brought avocado, tomato, and onion salads and other side dishes to the table, along with popping open a few bottles of red and white. Something was going down, to which I was not privy. The Mapuche take the spiritual side of the spring castration week seriously, to ensure that they respectfully usher in the new growing season. No start of spring is complete without a traditional niache ceremony.

The ceremony commenced with two beautiful, fat spring lambs being led into the barn and hoisted up by their hind legs. The Machupe farmhands placed a sling around their necks, bent them to the side, and slit their throats by driving a knife out from behind their trachea. The blood flowed quickly, pooling into two pans where it was immediately seasoned with dried chili, salt, pepper, fresh cilantro, lemon juice, and minced onion. Within two minutes, the lemon juice, salt, and herbs caused the blood to congeal to the consistency of firm pudding.

The European Chileans watched from the sidelines, but you know me—I dove right in. We passed around the pans, taking a spoonful of this red blood pudding. They love that mineraly, tinny flavor of blood. Flavorwise, it reminds me of biting into a copper roof on a hot summer’s day. We’ve all nicked a finger and shoved it into our mouth. Whether it’s blood from a paper cut or blood from a spring lamb, it more or less all tastes the same, except this time it had the added bonus of lemon juice, cilantro, and the chili pepper, which sort of negated the richness.

The problem with consuming blood dishes, especially fresh blood dishes, is the effect on your body temperature. Eating whale blubber causes the body to behave similarly. While I toured the western village of Bethel, Alaska, I ate a lot of blubber with the locals. Within minutes, your body temperature rises two or three degrees. Even in a cold room, you’re compelled to start stripping down; the sweaters and outer layers disappear pretty damn fast. The same thing happened at this niache ceremony. Interestingly, the Mapuche swear that niache works as a powerful aphrodisiac, although I did not find that to be the case.

After bleeding out, the lambs were immediately skinned, quartered, trimmed, and placed on rotisseries, which were turned by hand over a wood-burning fire. After about an hour and a half the lamb was ready, which coincided perfectly with the capullo finishing—the scrotum-sac stew was coming off the stove on the wood-burning oven—and we sat down to eat.

The spread teemed with fabulous comfort food. We passed platters of fresh avocado, tomato and onion salads, roasted potatoes, and loaves of crusty bread. The fire-roasted lamb and the bowls of capullo were incredible. If you like bone marrow, capullo is right up your alley. Rich and fatty, the inch-size pieces of scrotum literally melt in your mouth. They look like big square yellow cubes of Turkish Delight. They have a translucent quality to them but remain opaque in the center. The wine reduction around them added the perfect amount of acid. Initially, I thought the amount of wine added to the dish was overkill, but simmering for three hours on an open fire caused the excess to evaporate, leaving an intense, winey concentrated sauce.

The capullo is so filling, you can’t eat large amounts of it. We toasted our newfound friends and paused for a traditional Mapuche blessing from the elders. The spring harvest holds a lot of significance for these indigenous people. It celebrates the planting of the crops, the castration of the animals, the sacrificing of the spring lamb, and the blessing for a successful farming season. More than a celebration of the agricultural year to come, it’s one of the last remaining rituals that the Mapuche regularly celebrate.

What is fantastic and quite unusual is how the Mapuche share this ceremony with mestizos. The Mapuche are some of the kindest and friendliest people in the world, and they feel that the circumstances of their life are just as they should be. There is no hostility. They don’t feel like second-class citizens, nor are they treated that way. To this day, they serve as a powerful group in the Lake District. The meal felt like a family celebrating together, despite their differences. For me, that’s what sharing food and culture is all about.

ituals usually fall into some fairly predictable categories. There is the created modern ritual, like toasting business partners at a celebratory dinner after closing a big deal. It’s the kind of custom rooted in the ancient world. It’s been done for thousands of years, but every generation shapes it, creating a new cultural footprint.

Then we find marketed experiences. These are not re-creations; rather, they are combinations of traditional cultural experiences married with modern need and efficiency, like the Korean Barbecue and Sauna Restaurant. There is nothing ginned-up about it; the experience is authentic. Independently, Koreans adore the sauna and barbecue. It’s just the goofy marriage of the restaurant and the sauna that makes this experience distinctly modern. The Santeria ceremony I experienced in Cuba is much of the same, melding the modern with elements of traditional African religious practices. While these customs have filtered through generations, deep-seated rituals that accompanied African slaves to Cuba 500 years ago have stuck around in a big way. The Santeria practice of loving worship is still relevant and practical in the twenty-first century. It’s a combination platter of old and new.

I’ve experienced a lot of indigenous, first people’s shamanistic practices, most notably in South America. In Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile, I participated in—or was the subject of—cleansing rituals performed by shamans, healers, or yachac, that lovely Ecuadorian medicine man. These experiences took place in small
villages or in towns. Despite the stark contrast to the way you and I probably live, it’s next to impossible to travel to many of these places. It’s quite strange to visit someone practicing ancient traditions with your feet planted in the here and now of the twenty-first century.

But the most amazing traditional first people’s ritual that I ever participated in was the Trance Dance ceremony I sat in on in Botswana.

A few weeks ago, I flew into Maun, Botswana, a pocket-size airport: one gate serviced by a couple of flights a day from Gabarone, Francis Town, and Johannesburg. Botswana Airways runs two or three forty-eight-seat propeller planes in and out of there. Despite the almost antique airfield qualities to the infrastructure there, it’s one of the busiest small-plane hubs in the entire Southern Hemisphere. And here’s why: If you want to experience safari life, and it’s extremely popular these days for the people who can afford it, you fly into Maun. Safari and expedition companies set up offices or headquarters in this tiny town. Safari-bound tourists deplane and stroll into this little terminal in the middle of the Kalahari Desert. Every plane is met by a dozen or more guides from different camps spread out all across the Kalahari in southern Africa. They basically pick up their charges at the gate and take them away on the adventure of a lifetime. Maun is ground zero for bush plane activity. A handful of adventurers pile their brood into customized Range Rovers and Land Cruisers modified to handle eight to a dozen passengers in open seating, like a small double-decker bus in London, and drive to their camps. The vast majority of travelers board two- and four-seater planes that carry them to the camps by bush pilots, making Maun quite the bustling hub. Planes buzz in and out of there like mosquitoes.

Our bush pilots took us on a ninety-minute ride past the Okavango Delta, the world’s largest inland delta. We circled over the water, which teemed with wildlife. Huge numbers of elephants and giraffes grazed in and along the delta as the sun set. This
southward-tilting water system irrigates the desert as best it can until eventually it gets sucked down by the sand. The Okavango in Botswana is probably one of the last great animal paradises left on our planet that doesn’t feel like a zoo. Leopards, crocodiles, hippos, lions, giraffes, elephants, elands, and kudus flock there in tremendous numbers. As we bypassed the delta, I felt a pang in my heart. My assignment was to meet up with the legendary Bushmen of the Kalahari, but missing this once-in-a-lifetime animal experience bummed me out. I soon discovered skipping the delta wasn’t going to be such a big deal.

We landed on a grass airfield a couple hundred miles to the west in the small town of Xai Xai, a teeny cluster of homes built around one of the most famous watering holes in the world. Between flights, pilots spend most of their time filling in gopher holes on the landing strip for the next incoming flight, which are often weeks apart. Occasionally, geology companies that are reconnoitering the area for mineral exploration will visit, but it’s thrilling to land on this grassy airfield while the entire town of 100 people turns out to greet you.

The entire history of human civilization might not exist if it wasn’t for Xai Xai’s watering hole. The Bushmen of the Kalahari are one of the oldest civilizations in the world, with ancestry reaching back 35,000 years. The watering hole served as the hub of their activity, allowing them to survive there for all those years. Since the best theory of human growth tells us that all men are thought to have walked out of the Kalahari many years back, then we’re all potentially descendants of the Bushmen, which makes this watering hole one of the most culturally, historically, anthropologically, and sociologically important sites in the entire world. It’s not like Chichén Itzá in Mexico or the pyramids in Egypt. There are no lines, no tourists—it’s just a muddy hole in the ground, surrounded by a rickety old fence made up of twigs and sticks so the children and animals don’t fall in. You can gaze down
into the somewhat fetid water, now used mostly by animals. It’s arguably the most important physical site of any kind in the world, and there’s no signage and very few even know it. I got goose bumps just standing nearby.

Our main objective on this trip was to uncover life with a San tribe called the Juntwazee. It’s important to mention that the Bushmen of the Kalahari speak dialects within the Khoisan language family based on five or six clicking and whistling sounds. There is no written version of the language; therefore,
Juntwazee
is my best phonetic rendering of the tribe’s name. The Juntwazee tribe spend the majority of their time still living the way their ancestors did 30,000 years ago. No stores, no restaurants, nothing but a cluster of homes that some Bushmen take refuge in during the cold season when the desert is the least hospitable, when foraging and hunting are at their nadir.

Gaining access to the Juntwazee was an extremely difficult feat. After months of lobbying with the Botswana government, we finally were permitted to meet these folks. It’s no wonder the government takes their custodial role of this tribe seriously. They’ve often been abused. Outsiders have often depicted them—through movies, photographs, articles—with a message that’s not necessarily on target socially. One company even tried to use some of the women in an adult film. However, the government also understands that documenting this tribe’s history is of utmost importance. But once we were finally allowed in, we needed an entrée to these people. There was not a better choice than Ralph Bousfield.

Ralph’s great-grandfather relocated to Botswana from England in the middle part of the nineteenth century. He was an adventurer and explorer, and every generation of Ralph’s family followed in his footsteps, each with a seemingly more exotic story than the last. Ralph’s father, Jack Bousfield, is one of the most legendary hunters and safari specialists to have ever worked in southern Africa. To this day, he holds the Guinness world record
for crocodile kills. During the fifties, Jack supplied the entire European couture handbag, luggage, and clothing houses with the most valuable crocodile skins.

In the fifties, crocodiles were in such great numbers that few questioned the harvesting of these animals. These reptiles from the delta, with their silk-soft bellies, were almost blemish-free and in stunning condition. Jack Bousfield killed more than 53,000 crocodiles in his lifetime. The number could have been much greater, but he was also way ahead of his time as a conservationist. His ecological sensitivity and desire to preserve the biodiversity of Botswana prompted him to change courses. In the sixties, he abandoned crocodile hunting altogether and set up a safari camp, with the intention of preserving the Botswana he loved, and today that camp is known as Jack’s, established in the Makgadikgadi Salt Pan.

Ralph took over the family business that Jack established in the sixties, called it Uncharted Africa, and developed it into a business. The company now leads tours to four locales: Jack’s Camp, San Camp, Kalahari Camp, and Planet Baobab, the last named after the legendarily fantastic-looking trees that grow in the desert. Jack’s Camp and the San Camp are the only permanent camps to offer a chance to explore and understand the Kalahari. There are buildings at Planet Baobab and Kalahari Camp, but that’s a pretty generous term to throw around. Uncharted Africa also specializes in roving, tented safari camps, giving Ralph the ability to lead safari enthusiasts straight to the action. He knows the best stuff to see in Africa and how to find it, making this the trip of a lifetime for anyone fortunate enough to run with an Uncharted Africa tour, rated as the best safari camp on the continent.