Life and Death is Relative.

This morning I heard a chicken strutting around outside under my window and wondered whos it was and if the cat would have a little fun with it. I didn't think much more of it because there are chickens everywhere you look here in Otavalo. It's the defacto meat, eaten by everyone pretty much every day. This is a very rural and indigenous town and many people keep their own chickens. Of those that don't, they buy them live daily and cook them the same or next day. It's just how it is. NO ONE buys frozen meat of any kind—it's not even available if you wanted to. The good thing about this is that the meat here is fresh and organic. All the food here is. In the States, for any product to fulfill the definition of "organic" (or even "healthy", for that matter) would require all sorts of exceptions to the way our food chain brings food to our tables. Because we have such an extensive and complicated food delivery system, designed through capitalism-inspired market forces to have only a few producers provide for many millions or people (customers), any exception to the standard procedure is very costly.

If you looked at the most extreme definition of organic you find that in developing countries, most food fits that criteria—at 1/4 the cost of pre-packaged, processed foods in the states.

There are downsides, of course. No one gets rich in the food industry here, as there is no food industry outside of the big cities. Also, the risk of accidentally driving into a grazing cow is quite a bit higher here than in the States. In fact, it's a daily risk. So much so that drivers have taken up the habit of honking at anything that has the potential of possibly entering the roadway. Ferel dogs (of which there are many), people standing on the sidewalk looking in store windows, floating bags, intersections with people or other cars or not. In fact, to cover the bases, drivers—all of them—simply honk about every 10 seconds.

Feed is also a cost that isn't accounted for by people raising animals. So every morning people bring their cows, pigs and chickens to their favorite grassy area and let them feed and whatever grows from the ground. It doesn't matter if the land is public or private, if it's not being used, it's a good feed lot. Even thin patches between roads and storefronts are good enough to drop off your animals for the day. And so you commonly have chickens, pigs and cows grazing inches away from the roadside. So the chicken you bought at the street market that morning is in fact "organic" and has left a wonderfully small footprint on the planet, but has also helped to create havoc in a community that has over the years come to accept many instances of havoc by embracing a culture of "anything goes". And if you follow a certain line of thinking, this leads to interesting examples of cleanliness, building methods, child rearing, time management and commitment, noise and a total lack of personal drive to achieve something "better"—something so ingrained in the culture of the U.S., that it filters everything everyone does at all times.

So I come down for breakfast and go into the kitchen to say hello to Rosita, the indigenous woman who cooks the meals here, and see a pot filled with fresh chicken parts, waiting to be cooked. She knew that I knew what transpired that morning, and looked at me with a half smile knowing the visiting gringo would find the events foreign. What I also saw in her look was a recognition of the relationship between life and death and The Way Things Are.

One of the things that makes living in the U.S. so comfortable is that much of the cultural, financial and physical infastructure is devoted to putting a wall between us and The Way Things Are. It's easy to defend it by saying we are more "civilized" or "safer" than cultures that don't have these walls. But our system doesn't change the relationship between life and death, it just hides it—and in fact promotes and imposes it very harshly in other countries.

And if death is a natural and important part of life, what are we gaining by living in denial of what life really is?