To kill a chicken

I only have three weeks until I graduate from training and head off to my village to start working. It seems like the weeks have just flown by and I can hardly believe PST is almost over. This week, we actually have a project to complete. Our group of four trainees visited a health clinic and arranged to talk to one of the small groups that meets every week. This group is comprised of around 8-10 women who have malnourished children. We are going to give a health talk about nutrition, water sanitation, and hygiene. I should probably be planning some of it today instead of writing my blog but the day is too nice to be spending it on work.

This week, our training director decided to teach us how to cook Rwandan food so he divided us up into groups and sent us to the market with shopping lists. My group was in charge of buying cassava powder, salt, tomato concentrate and of course, five live chickens. I was in charge of the money so I was given 24,000 francs to carry around the market. I hid the money in several areas in case I was mugged and carried two purses to throw people off. Haha Thankfully, we also had two teachers with us to help when our bargaining skills slacked off. Before the trip, I was wondering how we were going to transport five chickens back to the center but fortunately, one of the trainees was raised on a chicken farm so she told us she would teach us how to carry them and kill them. When we finally got to the area where they sold chickens, we were immediately surrounded by abacuruzi (sellers) trying to sell their chickens and rabbits and by poor street children asking for jobs and money. It was a little overwhelming especially because I had a lot of cash on me and they were invading my personal space. Nevertheless, I surprised myself by bargaining very well for the chicken price. I actually got a very cheap price for each chicken and I was so proud of myself. I got the seller to go down from 5000 RWF to 2500 RWF for each chicken. And our trainee who was raised on the chicken farm inspected each chicken and taught us a few tricks about how to choose them (as if I am going to be buying live chickens for personal consumption in the future!) Anyway, it was all a very interesting experience and made me realize how spoiled I am to be living in the States. For one thing, meat is very expensive here. And I mean expensive. I’m going to convert the currency so you can get an idea. A kilo of beef costs $4 and a kilo is 2.2 pounds. One live chicken can cost up to 4000 RWF or $8!! And the per capital GDP is $250. Soooo, people don’t eat a lot of meat here. I think that many people have gardens, and the vegetables and fruit are cheap here.

The day after we bought our supplies at the market, we started cooking our food. And it was very difficult because we had to cook for 70 people and we had to use these ancient cooking techniques like charcoal grills and wood stoves. It took forever to peel and dice everything especially because the knives looked like they were taken from the caveman display at a museum. The most interesting part of all, however, had to be the chicken preparation. Those of you who buy your chicken already killed and nicely cleaned and frozen in the store are spoiled! First, we had to kill the chickens, then we had to defeather and degut them. And the killing was awful. The knives were so dull that when some of the volunteers tried to kill them, it took forever to cut off their scrawny little heads. At one point, one of the volunteers freaked out and the chicken got away with half of his head hanging off. Volunteers started screaming and running in all directions. Finally, one of the teachers caught the poor thing and finished him off. After we killed the chickens, we put them in boiling water to loosen their feathers. Then, we took them outside and started pulling the feathers off. I helped with this and was surprised at how easy it was to pluck the feathers. After the feathers were all off, I helped cut the chicken up and degut it. That was really interesting too but I kept messing up. I finally finished the chickens however after learning how to clean a gizzard and avoid certain unsavory body organs in the chicken’s inside.

The whole cooking process took about seven hours and the end result wasn’t really that pretty. But, we got an idea of how to cook food Rwandan style, which may lead many of us to hire cooks when we get to our site. As for me, I think I might hazard cooking for myself at first if I can find a way to get around the time constraints. My reasoning is that I personally prefer my style of cooking, and I am tired of finding bugs and rocks in my food.