By Jared Mercer
clicking my heels
This was written in October of 2008 after my journey to Kazakhstan to shoot the documentary Silent Bombs. My reactions to the food and you get to meet and greet with what you eat first hand (wow that rhymes well).
I am writing this at an overdue date. 23 years have passed in what is commonly referred to as my existence. I spent the anniversary of my birth in Kazakhstan, the Polygon to be exact. An area of nuclear testing where the rad-meter read 638 times over the safe limit of radiation. I may have poisoned myself in the name of the documentary I was working on. Silent Bombs is in fact the name in which I speak of.
The people in the village Sarjal (that’s probably the English spelling of the name) thought that it would be an excellent gift for Carrie-May’s birthday (she was the interviewer on the doc) to give her a sheep. A sheep that they would slaughter right in front of us and deliver on a stick for dinner. A gift that in fact cost our producer Gerry a fair chunk of money. I think we all needed to look up our definitely of gift once again. Through the back fence came two older men both covered in dust with deeply wrinkled and weathered faces. In their arms was a black fluffy sheep whose legs were bound and with the fear of death in its eyes. The men laid the sheep down on the ground where they prepared their knives and the table where the barbarism was about to take place. During the presentation, while everyone was talking and being merry, I walked over to the sheep and knelt beside the humble animal. If people believe that animals don’t have emotions or think as we think, at that moment I could prove that notion wrong as I looked that sheep in the eyes. The director Rob immortalized this moment by photographing the sheep and I in an existential time zone. The sheep’s eyes locked into mine and I knew of its awareness of what the future held for it. That sheep knew that it was to be slaughtered.
This is not lamb chop's play along
I don’t know if it had previously witnessed the savage murders of its brothers and sisters or if it was just some instinct that sheep possess after years of being the “sheep” to everyone else’s lions. Like cattle and chickens and so on, they do just live to die for the benefit of humanity. The more I spent by the animal’s side the more it began to violently shake in fear (who’s the animal again?) and the more I felt like the animal. I felt prompted to attempt to pick up the sheep and run, to where I don’t know, there was nothing surrounding Sarjal for years. I was also advised not to by the producer who paid for the sheep as he said the whole town would chase me down if I decided I felt brave. I was resigned to the helpless fact that there was no way to rescue this sheep. In between thoughts I find myself puzzled by the English language as I think about how the word “sheep” is both singular and plural.
As soon as I heard word that I would have to witness a sheep being gutted I didn’t like the sound of it. Then after meeting the sheep I was completely morally opposed to any such idea. Finally I stepped back as the reapers came to claim the helpless being and I stood far away while everyone else gathered closely (the throat slicing was shot by the DOP and can be actually be briefly seen in the final movie). I continued to watch from my distance. The man bore down on the animal, put the knife to its throat and started to saw the life form its body. The sheep convulsed and quivered until it fell limp under death’s grasp. Occasionally its earthly body would shake even after its death as the soul exited the flesh. The corpse was then placed on a table as two men and a child proceeded to skin the body and remove its organs. I forced myself to watch these events and how they unfolded with flesh dangling over an open fire.
the sheep cooking afterwards
As the mutilated remnants of the body were served to eat, I changed my original decision to boycott the feast and ate some of the animal I had grown so fond if in its living presence. I thought that I would have been so repulsed that I would not take part in eating and would in fact become a vegetarian after my return to Canada (as it is absolutely impossible to follow through on that lifestyle choice in Kazakhstan, or many other countries of the world for that matter). But I ate the sheep and it was very delicious. I knew that I loved to eat meat and that I would suffer as a vegetarian. Because I am/was fully aware of the fact that I would cease to exist as a vegan and such a decision is one of privilege that misguided people take (only the wealthy can choose to be vegetarian, everyone else takes what they can get). I decided to recognize the fact that I am a carnivore and there is no way around it. But! To be a carnivore one must witness such a horrific event to fully understand the cruelty that humans and all animals must live by to survive. I had to watch this poor lamb die and feel the sadness in order to deserve the right to eat any meat. How would vegans survive if our society collapsed? We would all return to our hunter-gatherer days and instincts.
I bit the bullet, I watched the murder, I ate the flesh, and I recognize the sacrifices made by others for my own survival. Perhaps I will one day have to kill for food so I can live. I hope I do not see such a day but I should not be unprepared for it. Although I will 
always frown upon hunters who hunt for the sake of hunting. Fuck you Sarah Palin and your shooting of animals from a fucking helicopter. What for? The case for and against.
I was born very far from where I’m supposed to be, now my life has just been a long journey home. It has taken me a while to get young and now that I’m here I think that I’ll stay a while.
3 Comments
“…such a decision is one of privilege that misguided people take.” Do you really believe that? In much of the developing world, it is only the wealthy who can afford to eat meat on a regular basis. Much of the world is full of people who don’t eat meat (far more than North America), for religious and financial reasons. I applaud you for making your decision to keep eating meat after seeing the slaughtering of the sheep, but don’t confuse the choice to be a vegetarian as one that only the wealthy can afford to make.
I choose to be a vegetarian for environmental reasons just as much as ethical reasons. I consider myself neither wealthy, nor misguided. To be sure, I am definitely privileged, for living in this place in this time in the socioeconomic status that I enjoy. But I’ve made a choice based on the recognition that I can have by far the most positive impact on environmental change, not by recycling or riding my bike more, but by cutting back (I chose completely) on my meat consumption. It’s a choice I’ve made through careful research and soul searching. I’m not telling anyone how to live their life, but I’ve chosen how to live mine, and I would never consider a serious decision I made very carefully to be a misguided one.
That being said, if society collapsed, you can best believe I’d be the first one tossing the boar into the fire
Just my thoughts in response! Great job with the magazine!
Leanne
haha, you would be the first one tossing the boar into the fire, that is funny and true. Well you made your comment about the developing world not being able to afford meat and although I cannot speak for Asia that is not the case with Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe and Eurasia. My experience and others’ from being in places like Mexico, Nigeria, Libya and Kazakhstan is that people keep sheep and other animals out back of their places and that is what they eat all the time. Vegetarians don’t exist in the countries I named off, and if they do it is a very small minority. Even though I eat meat I felt sick at the amount of meat I had to eat in these countries because that’s all there is. its not too expensive, there is nothing else! Maybe the rich could have a nice salad somewhere with no meat but I never saw it.
I’m not trying to say that there are no vegetables in these countries but meat is just the way it is and finding a vegetarian there is pretty difficult not to say that none exist. It is definitely a first world North American choice as far as I have seen in my many travels (and from what I’ve been told by others and their travels) so although I appreciate your decision to do so and soul searching and such, I must tell you that you are wrong, the people around the world who eat what they can get are not vegetarian, therefore it is something only the wealthy “decide” because they can make that decision. Go to the villages of Kazakhstan and try to be a vegetarian. It’s literally impossible, no lies.
So I am not trying to insult you or anyone else who is a vegetarian, I have just come to believe that people in Canada can make such a decision, while the rest of the world does not. Or does so in very very small numbers, and that it is a decision of privilege. I don’t know how much you have travelled in your life (I know you have done some that’s for sure) but if you went to a number of countries in South America, Africa, and Eurasia (I know you have been to some of these areas) you would not be arguing that choosing what you eat is a privileged choice, and I went as far as saying misguided but that may be pushing my luck
Chevonne would also argue you on this after a second trip to Mexico where she spent the summer and could not escape all the meat, and was told outright that vegetarians don’t exist there. I don’t know what else to say, but as far as I know this is the truth, I think your decision is good (and healthy!) for you, but it is not one the rest of us can make as we move around the globe.
One question though, as I have never been to the Oriental side of Asia, is it there that people “can’t afford meat” because everywhere else it is the cheap way to go (even in North America it is cheaper to go with meat than with vegetables at restaurants and so on), maybe you have been there.
I always like the replies though, keep it coming. I love to debate!
Thanks very much for that nicely written post.