A woman among the spectators making sure her cat is safe. Credit: Rodrigo Abd /AP Photo
I almost forgot about an extraordinary city in Peru in South America called La Quebrada, but a recent BBC news item brought back vivid memories of that city. In the report, the BBC correspondent reported that some animal lovers had demonstrated against the killing and eating of cats during a festival, which takes place in the month of September every year.
I first heard about the cat eating festival when I was a student at the famous National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). I wanted to know more about that feline gastronomic festival. Indeed, I was surprised to hear that news, as I thought it was only in my area that the slippery animal found its body in the cooking pot.
My investigation on the campus elicited some information. According to my Peruvian friends, the cat eating business was started by the African slaves. It was said that the African slaves ate the cats on the plantations in order to survive. Later, the Afro-Peruvian community set up a festival in honor of a black saint accompanied by the eating of cats every year.
My dear readers, as a young student with the usual youthful exuberance who used to be part in the gastronomic action of cats on the famous Keta Lagoon, (in our area it is only men who do the cooking), I decided to take part in that festival.
Fortunately, I had a lot of students who were of African descent attending UNAM and I told them I could do some wonderful things with cat meat. So in September, I travelled to La Quebrada with six other colleagues.
La Festival Gastronomico del Gato, the Gastronomic Festival of the Cat) or the cat-eating feast involved cat races, fireworks, dancing and nights of eating and drinking.
The patron saint is paraded through the city during the religious festival.
So I landed in La Quebrada and set up my kitchen in the house of one of the high-class ladies and news went round that a guy from the mother continent would be dishing out authentic African delicacies with Mr. Cat.
My dear readers, curious and giggling ladies visited me immediately after I set up my own thing in the kitchen. One of them asked if my delicacy would raise their aphrodisiacal cravings.
I knew that request would be made so I prepared the special secret liquor that my uncle taught me years back when I was with him on the Congo River fishing for crocodiles.
As I set up the tables with an array of the ?lagoon recipes,? the ladies jumped and drooled over the things on the table.
I asked the invited guests to have a little of my liquor before enjoying the meal.
My dear readers, I spent three days in that Peruvian city cooking my delicacy and on the third night, an Afro-Peruvian in his early seventies visited me.
I was extremely exhausted and I suffered a mild headache as a result of the throbbing music. The old man came to my corner and tried to speak to me in English but his grasp of the language was limited so I told him to use Spanish.
?Young man, I got to know that you are a student in Mexico. Indeed, you have a very bright future. Your parents are waiting for you to come back to the motherland to use what you have learnt to cloth and feed them in their old age. Your country needs you too, but here you are, wasting your time chasing cats and girls. We, from Africa, were sacrificed to become low-class people because of what our ancestors did to their brothers and sisters. We were cruelly condemned to a permanent servitude,? he said sadly.
?However, there is one way we can get out of the doldrums and that is by clinging to a special cross that saw the blood of a lamb without blemish being sacrificed on it. Indeed, the cross has given us the opportunity to get out of that quagmire.?
I knew then that the old man was preaching the good work of Jesus Christ to me but I just laughed it off at the time. However, he said, ?My young son, when the time comes, you would definitely chase that cross, you would not chase the cats and the girls again.?
We totally run riot in that house for three days and what happened there was incredible. It surpassed the crazy things I used to do with my cousins in the suburbs of Kinshasa and Brazzaville.
After the festival, I spent three days in the house of one of the indigenes of La Quebrada in order to purge myself from the excesses. It was a very terrible experience and I felt very weak at the time.
We flew back to Mexico City and I forgot everything including the words of the old man.
I thank God that today I am not chasing the cats and girls of La Quebrada but the Cross of Jesus Christ.
By Amos Amaglo
