Not to go for the clichéd, Lion King African stereotype, but we had kind of a “circle of life” experience here in Dodowa yesterday-witnessing, and having a hand in, both birth and death. Our neighbor, Henry, breeds dogs, and one of them gave birth to a litter of 12 puppies! As we went about our daily business, we stopped by Henry’s porch to keep a tally of the ever-growing number of puppies, until late last night it was determined that 12 was the maximum. We also had our Thanksgiving meal, round II, with Charity’s family. A little backstory: every year, when Thanksgiving comes around, the girls here in Dodowa kill a chicken to make for the dinner and have the family over to eat. We had research center friends and our neighbor over for dinner last week on actual Thanksgiving, but planned a second dinner for this Thursday. So, all semester we’ve been hearing about this mysterious chicken-killing, and finally this week it came to the forefront. Charity brought it up at dinner on Monday, and asked which one of us would cut the neck. She first pointed at Hannah, whose face must have registered some amount of hesitation, because the next thing I knew she looked at me and said “Ally, you will do it, you want to be a doctor.” Well, she had me there. On Wednesday, we were leaving dinner when the issue of actually procuring said chicken was raised-we see chickens every day, everywhere, but aren’t clear on how one actually buys a chicken to kill to eat. Can you just grab one off the road if it walks by you? How do you know which chicken belongs to which person or household? Such are the enigmas we face as obrunis in Dodowa. Thankfully, Vale offered to buy the chicken for us during the day on Thursday, and sure enough, when we showed up for the execution after work yesterday, a giant white rooster was strutting around their patio. Hello, new friend. While I wasn’t super excited to be getting chummy with a bird that I would be eating in a few short hours, I was also eager to see how this process was done, and no way was I about to chicken out (pun intended) of a certainly unique opportunity. Ema had done his best to describe to us how to kill it the night before, as we perused pictures of girls in previous years doing the deed. However, since Ema’s main piece of advice was to spin the chicken around in circles quickly to make it “sleep”, we weren’t super confident in his guidance. Luckily, Vale proved extremely helpful. She grabbed the chicken by the wings and motioned for me to come over and hold it. So I spent the next twenty minutes holding the chicken in one hand and sneaking up on Elvis to scare him with it. Then came the moment of truth. I followed Vale out into the yard, where she dug a hole about five inches deep “to catch the blood”. I then proceeded to put the chicken on the ground, put one foot on its legs, the other on its wings, and grab its head to expose the neck. The surgery began-I sawed away at its neck, and soon deep red blood spurted out into our blood-catching hole. Vale had to help a little bit, as the neck proved to be quite tough, but soon the chicken stopped struggling and we brought our dinner back to the patio to clean and cut.
Oddly enough, I was very proud of my chicken-killing ability, as I never thought I’d ever be able to do that, or ever even want to do that. Literally, I never again want to kill an animal that will become my dinner. However, I was proud to now be added to the succession of Dodowa girls who have killed the chicken for Thanksgiving. It’s clearly become a tradition and rite of passage, and Charity’s look of pride when we did it and cooked them a large dinner later that night said it all. As chaos reigned in our living room last night-kids hunting mangoes from the trees outside, drawing pictures for us, playing with the puppies, spilling Fanta, flatly refusing to eat the tomato sauce on top of their pasta, and finally passing out right on the floor from all the excitement, I thought of the twelve people we spent our Thanksgivings with this week and last. Research center friends, neighbors, families, roommates, and kids-twelve people that have welcomed us into their homes, helped and guided us as friends, and embraced us as their own daughters and sisters. We are unbelievably blessed in our lives here, and it took killing a chicken to remind me of that.
No comments:
Post a Comment