Cats, Dogs and Chickens

For just a short time we were owners of three animals. We were invited to one of our student's homes who lives near the lake, so last weekend the three of us rode our bikes to his parents house for lunch. As it is customary to do for special visitors, they set up chairs and a table outside for us in the shade and bought slightly cool Fantas (quite amazing when there is no electricity) and biscuits (cookies) for us. Then we biked a little further to the lake while his mom cooked us lunch. When we returned we had a few options for lunch. Options? Come on, this is Africa you take what you get! So we ate nsima, rice, hard-boiled eggs with tomatoes and usipa (basically minnows). We feed usipa to our cat and dog, but I couldn't bring myself to eat the head and tail of the usipa, but I will testify that Brian ate them whole. I made him do it more than once just to blog about it. After lunch we sat with the family a little longer and offered a pack of gum and a Dakota Communities purple glitter pen courtesy of Jack and Bonnie Rolig. In exchange they gave a us a big bag of peanuts from their garden, baobab tree fruits and a live chicken. I won't lie, I was actually excited to get a chicken. You may remember that we had biked to our student's house, but that was no obstacle to get the chicken home. He simply strapped it to the back of the bike and we were off. Compared to massive amounts of firewood, furniture, whole families and goats, a chicken on a bike was no big deal until it tried to make a break for it half way home. Our student was quick to catch it though and we were off again. When we got home we were a little unsure what to do with this chicken. We contemplated keeping it and getting more chickens to raise, but then we decided a cat and dog were enough responsibility. Plus we were both just freaked out about picking it up. Hopefully I can get a video up of it. So anyway, being the hypocritical meat eaters that we are, neither of us was willing to kill it, so we had our worker do it. I have to admit that after the initial killing, the process was quite interesting. We just kept the "good parts" and gave our worker the things Americans throw out-head, feet, intestines, neck, butt(?) and some other internal organ that she said was her brother's favorite part. Needless to say the village chicken was a little tough compared to our hormonal American chickens. We may be sticking to rice and beans for a while. We are also grateful for all of our processed meats and protein sources that have come in care packages. (Thank you, thank you, hint, hint).