drinking frog juice

Many years ago I posted on my old blog louiseinsenegal about a visit to the Akodessewa fetish market in Lome.  Whilst gruesome, it was also quite fascinating to see all the animals and animal heads on display - mostly intended for medicinal use or as 'charms' to protect the purchaser or their property from some kind of evil.

So it was interesting last weekend to go somewhere fairly similar in a totally different part of the world - the witches' market in Lima, Peru.  Surprisingly few Peruvians even know it is there, but within the enormous Gamarra market is this section of stalls selling animals and animal heads, mostly intended for medicinal use or as 'charms' to protect the purchaser or their property from some kind of evil.  & there appears to be no link to the Afro-Peruvians, this is a market for the indigenous Peruvians.

Of course the particular animals on sale differ in some respects.  No cat or dog heads in the Lima market, and no dried chameleons.  Instead there are caiman and deer heads, and dried bloated toads.  But in the two I saw some related species - different kinds of monkey heads, and dried bats.  One big difference was the snakes.  In Togo, snakes are associated with some powerful voodoo spirits, so would never be deliberately killed, whilst the market in Lima was full of them: portions of snake skin; whole dried snakes; snake heads; and the soft, smooth bodies of freshly dead snakes.  This beautiful boa was in the process of being cut open with these scissors, so the the insides could be removed and discarded to enable the skin to be sold.

No-one seemed at all disturbed by my touching the bits of animals, or asking questions about their use, or even by my taking photos, even though it is illegal to sell, transport or profit from wildlife in Peru.  Indeed one man, who tried unsuccessfully to sell me a harpy eagle talon and a piece of snake skin, then gave me his business card, telling me he could ship such things to anywhere I wanted in the world, as he pays off a man working in the airport in Lima!


I had heard about the frog juice, or frog shakes, which are on sale here, as a traditional Andean cure for anaemia and respiratory diseases.  I soon spotted the fish tanks, cages and bowls with the frogs in - some of them apparently endangered Titicaca water frogs.  So I didn't want to buy a drink, to risk being responsible for the death of an endangered species.  But plenty of the locals were buying them.  I watched the vendor pick a frog out of the tank, whack its head against the counter-top to kill it, and in one rapid movement to skin it.  It then went into a pan of simmering liquid for a minute or two before being poured whole into the blender along with various powders and liquids, a spoonful of honey, and two small birds eggs - whole ones still in their shells.  The thick greenish-brown drink was then passed through a sieve before being served to customers.  As each customer got a whole jugful I got my chance to try it, offering a woman a very small sum of money for just one glassful of her purchase.  It tasted kind of earthy, but perfectly okay, and had no ill-effects on my digestive system.