the kill

            I have a bucket list for things I want to do during my Peace Corps service.   A few days after New Year’s, I spent one boring, hot afternoon sitting around my hut and dreaming up ideas of everything I wanted my service to be.  I came up with this list; I’ve since decided that I can accomplish most of these during the year 2012.  I’ll probably need to kill a few hours one afternoon next year and make a new list anyways.

                So, here’s my to-do list: 

·         Trip to Cape Town

·         Get published

·         Start correspondence with classroom in USA

·         Start a library

·         Kill a chicken

·         Live for a month at $1 per day

·         Trip to Mozambique

·         Start a Life Skills class at high school

Awhile back, I shared my list with ‘M’e Mamosa, the principal from one of my schools.  This woman is a neighbor of mine and probably the closest thing to a mother that I have in Lesotho.  She also happens to be a chicken farmer.  She raises chickens year-round and sells them for 55 rand (about $7).  The cost includes slaughtering, de-feathering and cleaning the chickens to be cooked, all of which she does at home with the help of a few local ladies.

Last Wednesday, ‘M’e Mamosa showed up at school and mentioned that her “people” were slaughtering chickens that day.  They had a total of ten chickens to slaughter, plus one extra that they were saving especially for me.  ‘M’e Mamosa even decided that we needed to leave school a bit early in order to get home and finish the slaughtering.

I was shocked that she had remembered my bucket list, and a bit nervous that I was actually going to check this item off.  If you know me at all, you’ll know that I’m absolutely terrified of blood and guts.  Anytime I see something particularly bloody (or even talking in detail about blood, blood vessels, bloody cuts, spurting blood, etc.), I get this odd feeling that someone is about to jump out from nowhere and slice my neck open.  I’m not really sure why, but it’s a frightening thought, and it makes me do a double-chin to keep my neck protected.  So as you can imagine, cutting through the neck of a chicken was going to be a big step.

We left school a little after lunchtime and arrived at ‘M’e Mamosa’s house shortly after.  Thankfully I had decided to throw my camera in my bag that morning, so I was ready to document the entire experience.  I recruited ‘M’e Mamosa’s eldest daughter, Mosa, to be the cameraman.  Mosa is the same age as me and a total “girlie-girl”.  She’s the only Mosotho I know that owns a hair straightener and six pairs of heels.  Needless to say, she was not going to participate in the slaughter.

‘M’e Mamosa sent one of her helpers to the hen house to fetch the victim.  Walking together towards the scene of the crime, with the squawking chicken in our arms, I had this awful feeling that the chicken knew what was coming.  I wanted to say a little memorial or something before the kill, but there was hardly a second to think.

‘M’e Mamosa had a huge knife in her hand and had just finished “sharpening” it (she rubbed it against a rock in her driveway for a few seconds).  She explained that she was going to knock the chicken over the head with the knife handle in order to make it dizzy, and then I was to make my move. 

It all happened in a flash.  ‘M’e Mamosa lurched forward and clocked this poor chicken on the top of the head with the back of the knife and quickly handed the knife over to me.  The chicken squawked and kind of bobbed its head around, like in a cartoon when someone gets hit with an anvil and sees stars, but it was clearly still alive and aware of its surroundings.  I hesitated, but ‘M’e Mamosa urged me towards the neck.

She and another local woman were holding the chicken down on the ground.  ‘M’e Mamosa grabbed the beak and head of the chicken and thrust it into my left hand.  Holding the head on the ground, I used my right hand to literally saw away at the chicken’s neck.

For a horrifying three seconds, the chicken was screeching and I thought that I wouldn’t be able to finish.  I almost stopped then and there to hand the knife back to ‘M’e Mamosa to finish it off.  But I knew that it would be even worse to stop halfway, so I pushed through—screaming the entire time and looking in the opposite direction.  Mosa stood in front and snapped picture after picture.

Once I could feel the knife scratching bare dirt, I lifted my left hand and looked at the limp, bloody chicken head that was still moving.  Yes indeed, a chicken can run around with its head cut off.  The two ladies helping me had to hold down the twitching body so it wouldn’t go running off into the garden.  The blood seeping from the neck had splattered all over my forearms, and I couldn’t stop screaming while I was holding this dead chicken head.  I couldn’t let go of it, either.  I would have rather gripped the head until it stopped moving than see it writhing around on the ground near my feet.

The worst was over, but we still weren’t finished.  We took the corpse back to the garage and immediately dipped it in a bucket of boiling water to loosen the feathers and pluck them out.  That part was strangely satisfying.  The feathers came out quite easily, without any blood.  But the smell in the garage was downright foul.  It was a combination of the steaming hot chicken water, the irony smell of blood, and damp, dirty feathers.  I think one of the women noticed that I was struggling a bit with all of these dead, bloody chickens lying around, and she pulled up a chair so I could sit down and put my head between my knees.

Gutting the chicken was absolutely disgusting.  I couldn’t do it.  ‘M’e Mamosa told me to observe carefully as she pulled out the intestines in a greasy, steaming heap.  She made me separate the gallbladder from the rest of the organs; apparently, the gallbladder is literally the only part of the chicken which isn’t eaten.  I pretended that I was highly interested in watching what she was doing, but instead I was staring at a spot on the floor next to her foot.  I thought that if I focused any longer, I would faint. 

We ended by chopping off the head and the feet, which are usually later deep fried and eaten as a delicacy.  When she asked if I wanted the head and the “wise fives”, I politely declined.  She laughed.  She did give me the entire chicken for free.  When I tried to pay, she declined and insisted that I could pay “next time”. 

                Thursday night, I feasted on roasted lemon chicken and instant cheese and broccoli rice (thanks Grandma J!).  ‘M’e Mamosa suggested that I eat my chicken on Thursday and not Wednesday—I think she knew that I might have a difficult time enjoying a drumstick while reflecting upon my chicken murder.