For most of us meat comes cleaned, wrapped, gutted and featherless. We remove ourselves from the actual homicide, no guilt, no lingering mental images of cows and goats pleading for their lives, just tasty legs and thighs. Not here. It's hand to hand combat in Africa, if you want meat, you either kill it yourself or go to Monday Market and have the nyama guy hack off a hunk he's got hanging from a tree, flies buzzing around above and skinny dogs hanging around below. Neither of which I find overly appetizing.
I've mentioned the African Nine Step Program, how it applies to all aspects of life here in the village.
Here's how we do Colonel Sanders in Berega.
1. Chase down the chicken.
2. Lay it down and stand on its wings and feet
3. Pluck some neck feathers right where you plan to make your incision.
4. Dig a small hole in the ground to catch the blood that will all too soon be gushing from its stump.
5. Hold the chicken by the head with one hand and commence sawing with the other.
6. Hold the neck over the hole as its life blood oozes into the dirt.
7. Remain standing on the wings for a bit while your dinner twitches and seizes
8. Tuck the headless neck under the wing for transport to the pot.
9. Immerse in hot water
10. Remove and pluck.
11. Cut off feet and gut chicken, saving all the choice bits for your friends. (Mbuli likes the liver)
That's two extra steps, but I just opened an account at Barclay's Bank and it only took four trips to town, so it evens out over time.
That's how Chenai and Mbuli, Ruth's sons, killed my bird. The only problem was after they finished the gory little episode I couldn't eat it, and I gave it to Teacher Martha.
That's what happened to Blandina's chicken. Jenny Abduli's chicken is still happily pecking around in Ruth's yard. When I get a chicken I board it at Ruth's, as she has chickens and I have no idea how to care for one. Also I have no other chickens, and I think they're happier in a group. But fortunately for Jenny's chicken, the last killing was traumatic enough that it may live a good while, it may even die of old age.
In the meantime, I eat eggs, although a village egg can be just as traumatic. Sometimes it doesn't look or smell like an egg when you crack it, and sometimes there's pieces of the baby chick inside. In Ghana, the chickens were fed fish meal and they smelled and tasted like fish.
And the yolks were white. I think I ate 3 eggs the entire seven months I lived at that orphanage.
I eat lots of fruit and vegetables. I can still get parasites, but I don't have to stand on a mango as it flaps around in its death throes.
This may be the most ridiculous blog I've written. But then, in Africa you can go from sublime to ridiculous at light speed.
Strange but true, I have begun eating small lumps of ugali. I know I said I never would, but by lunch time at school sometimes I'm just too hungry. What I do like is the greens, Mama Dani makes good greens. So I put some greens on a small bit of ugali and it's ok. It has no real taste of it's own, so it's just a means to get the greens into my mouth. It's very filling though, a little goes a long way. But then it reconstitutes in my descending colon and there it stays. Something to remember the next time I'm planning a long bus trip.
The kids are great. You should hear them reading English and Kiswahili. Spelling is still an issue, but slowly they improve. English is a ridiculous language. The rules make no sense, and things don't sound like they look. Ough has six sounds, and I dread the day I introduce it to the kids. Then there's silent letters, if it's going to be silent, why use it in the first place? I never really thought about all this crap until I started teaching,
Martha teaches the preschool in the morning, while I teach English and Math to the Standard 1 kids. We switch after lunch. She does a great job, the little guys are chattering away in English, and narcing off all the kids who slip into Kiswahili or Kaguru.
The school year ends in December, so by January we will have preschool, St.1 and St.2. We're going to need a Standard 2 teacher, o yeah, and a classroom. I'm less worried about the classroom, it's a small class and we will find a place, we can use my house if we have to. The teacher is going to be another matter. Anyone interested? I'm beginning the search now, things take time here. But it's a sweet deal.
There's a free place to live, a stipend, plane fare, lots of perks. Electricity and running water (cold, but running). And freedom. Africa will let you do almost anything you want. All you have to do is say you will. The folks here are just great, very welcoming. They'll even kill your chickens for you, and you can't ask for much more than that. The food isn't all that tasty, and it's the same thing all the time, but you don't have to worry about your weight. Hard to get fat when there's nothing tempting and the cookies taste like pesticide.
I'm trying to give an honest assessment of life here, I wouldn't want anyone to think they've been conned. It's good and bad, like everywhere, but definitely more good. The monkeys have been raiding the shambas and stealing the maize, but that won't be a problem for you. Living in Africa is definitely a positive experience.
So if anyone is interested, let me know. I can talk you through how to get here,what you need, what you don't. Oreos, dental floss, maybe a knife sharpener.
Christina got sent home the other day for telling Freddy "kuma kwako" which is Kiswahili for the C word. We had her go home and bring back her mom, who asked to speak to some witnesses (the entire class). Than she asked Dani to go out and select a likely looking stick so she could beat the daylights out of Chris. She was hoping to do it in front of the class, as an example, but I insisted she beat her outside the school, so she said she'd wait till after work. I can't believe some of the conversations I have here.
L
