The Deadly Musical Fruit

Bohol is in the headlines again today. Bohol Students Die of Food Poisoning. 28 to 30 students died after eating fried cassava yesterday. Apparently there’s a kind of cassava crop that naturally has cyanide. If not properly skinned and cleaned, the dose can be lethal.

Immediately what came to my mind was: “Bohol! The land of tarsiers, Chocolate Hills, and killer cassavas!” Or how about: “Kamoteng kamatayan!” (even shorter: “Kamotayan!”) Or: “Try our cassava—they’re to die for!”

Being Boholanos, my parents love the stuff. They never fail to mention that during World War 2 all they ate was kamote. Thank god I didn’t get my parents’ fondness for cassava cake or kamote. I never knew that the musical fruit could also be deadly in a non-olfactory way.

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Erratum: To be strict about it, the “musical fruit” is kamote, while cassava is kamoteng kahoy. Those are two different crops. To be fair to the lowly kamote, the musical, olfactory-challenging fruit isn’t the deadly one, it’s the cassava. The title should have been “Killer Kamoteng Kahoy” or “Cassava Kills” or something like that. Obviously towards the end of my post I mixed up the two.

So all you kamote-que lovers, go back to eating your favorite snack. It’s cyanide-free. -- (McVie, 11 March 2005, 9:15p.m.)