The Day I Ate Lassie...

I'm going to come right and say it: I ate dog, and I don't mean the "hot" variety. And it was good , too; I don't have any regrets or remorse about it. In fact, it kinda tastes like steak, unless you get ahold of one of the kidneys, which taste, well, like kidney. Last night a friend invited me out for a new culinary experience. Since to me part of being open-minded is being open stomached, I agreed. What followed was a whirlwind tour of several cafes, warungs, and trattorias where our good friend canus familiaris is served ala yummy. The main attraction was a little eatery with the brilliant name of "Scooby Doo". I definitely am not making this up; I wish I was, though. The best I could do on short notice was "The Dog House" and "Chow Puppy". But both of those pail in comparison to the widespread appeal of the little pushcart known widely for the best dog downtown. I mean, who doesn't love Scooby? And here's your chance to become one with him, in a way... Locally Fido Friccasse is known as Jamu or more commonly by the code "B1". Since this is a predominantly Muslim society and the consumption of "unclean" animals like dogs, pigs, and bats is forbidden, codes are used to advertise the product without offended the mores of a certain segment of the population. Pork in Indonesian is "Babi", hence the moniker "B2". I don't know why dog is B1 and pork is B2. And I'll leave you to guess what constitutes B3... While we ate we had the chance to talk a bit with Ratna, the lovely proprietress of this fine establishment. Even though she operates a pushcart, she's always in the same location, and has a pretty solid clientele. She told us that she sells as many as 100 plates of pooch every evening. She gets her dog from a provider in Bantul, a region just outside of town, and one evening's business usually requires around 13 kilograms of meat, or two dogs. She told us that Javanese dogs are preferable to German Shepherds, Dobermans, and other varieties of foreign dogs, because Javanese dogs eat anything, whereas the foreign dogs are generally raised on dog food. Evidently this makes a difference. In Indonesia, there are three main groups that consume dog as food: the Batak, the Minahasa (northern Sulawesi), and the various peoples of the island of Flores. The first of these groups, the Batak, hail from the slopes of the SUPERVOLCANO Toba in the northern part of Sumatra. A few years ago I was lucky enough to visit the Batak homeland around Lake Toba. The Batak are a predominantly Christian people with a rich culture and proud history. They've been in the area for a couple thousand years and have a unique system of familial organization called the marga. And like their Minangkabau neighbors to the south, they have a reputation as fierce warriors but are also known for the high value they place on education. As I was journeying around Lake Toba, the thing that struck me most was the elaborate mausoleums the Batak construct for those that have passed away. The Batak have very elaborate funerary ceremonies in which the body of the departed is placed in a coffin and transported to the cemetery amidst musical accompaniment. During the procession the Batak take steps to ensure the departed can't find his/her way back to the village should he/she somehow rise from the dead. Several years after the initial burial the bones of the departed are exhumed and later interred in a special mausoleum known as a tambak (see the picture to the right). If you ever have the opportunity to spend some time amongst the Batak you should do it, and not just for the dog! But wait a minute, Keith....Did you say "supervolcano"? Indeed I did. It might even be characterized as a "super-duper volcano". Supervolcanoes are sites where magma pools beneath the surface of the earth, but is unable to break through the crust. Pressure builds and builds and builds until finally it is released in an eruption of catastrophic proportions. These eruptions make events like Pinatubo, Krakatoa, and Tambora seem like the mere popping of a balloon. When Toba last erupted around 75,000 years ago, it lofted nearly 3000 cubic kilometers of debris (1) into the atmosphere and blanketed places as far away as India with half-a-foot of ash. According to vulcanologists it was the largest eruption in the past 25 million years. It is thought that the eruption killed most of the people living at that time and created a "genetic bottleneck" for the human race. Lake Toba is in fact a giant caldera, or volcanic crater (2), created when the magma was ejected from beneath the earth surface. Basically it's a big hole. Through the years it gradually filled with water and became a lake. Though it's hard to imagine the scale of the event, you can get an idea of the awesome magnitude of the supervolcano by cruising around Lake Toba. Yellowstone in the US is another example of a supervolcano. I've included a diagram lifted from the internet to the right. Anyway, today we've gone from dogs to Bataks to supervolcanoes. Just another day in the life of your average geographer. If your interested in learning more about supervolcanoes, check the Hawaii state library for documentaries. You'll be amazed...and terrified. (1) Think of a box 18 miles long, 6 miles across, and 6 miles high. Then fill it with ash and rock. That's what Toba did. In comparison, Tambora, another Indonesian volcano which last erupted in 1815, ejected about 100 cubic kilometers of debris, which affected the global climate for a couple of years. Mt. St. Helens, which I alluded to in a previous post, ejected about 1.2 cubic kilometers of debris. (2) Calderas are a conspicuous part of the landscape in Hawai'i as well. Locate a topographical map of Oahu. Look carefully at the Ko'olau and Wainae mountain ranges. Do these look like parts of two separate calderas? What do you think happened to the rest of the caldera?