The Chicken
Dinner That Never Was
We have divided up into teams of two,
taking turns to cook dinners in the evenings for our group. Somehow, I got
paired up with cheerless Andrew. Twice divorced with two grown children, he’d
been an accountant for twenty-two years. At fifty-four he was the only volunteer
older than me. I think Andrew forgot how to smile years ago. He speaks deliberately as if each word he
utters has been carefully weighed and considered ahead of time. His too-thin
frame reminds me of Tibetan ascetics who live in the mountains surviving on
berries, roots and goat milk—men who willingly choose their austere, cheerless
existences and half-starve themselves to achieve a higher state of being. Let’s
just say, Andrew is not the warm and fuzzy type.
After nearly a week of vegetarian
meals—vegetables in tomato sauce, vegetables and rice in tomato sauce or
vegetables and beans in tomato sauce—we are ready for some meat. I’d seen
several butcher shops around town, but each had a fly-encrusted side of beef
hanging in the open-air window, slowly roasting under the equatorial sun.
Needless to say, we are not going to patronize those stores. That leaves just
one choice—buying a live chicken from the market. Deciding to purchase a live
chicken that will somehow be transformed into a meal by two people whose entire
previous experience with chicken consists of pre-packaged boneless breasts, is
a little like choosing to climb Mount Everest as your first mountain-climbing
experience. But we are determined to bring home the bacon for our fellow
volunteers.
Our plan is simple: go to the
market, pick out a chicken and then have the chicken salesman do the dirty work
by executing the poor little buzzard. Then we’ll take it home, pluck it, cut it
up and cook it. Sounds simple right?
We make our way to the market. My
job is to take photos of this event for posterity. Price is not a problem. You
can purchase a live chicken for a couple dollars. We find the live chicken
section of the market, but immediately reach our first hurdle. Exactly how does
one choose the right chicken? Do you pry open its beak to look at…well…what? Do
you lift its tail feathers and look into its chicken nether regions? Is that
even allowed? I could just imagine the headline in the Arusha Times, the local English newspaper: “American Volunteers Expelled From Country,
Branded As Chicken Perverts” or “Poking Chicken Privates Lands Two Americans In
The Pokey.”
Of course I’m having these debates
in my own head. Andrew is taking this all very seriously—too seriously. I’m
snapping pictures as if recording the first lunar space landing and he is
staring morosely at chicken after chicken the salesman pulls out of the cages.
The whole thing falls apart when the chicken salesman gets frustrated and finally
waves us away because it is apparent that we can’t make a decision. Secretly, I’m
relieved.
We make a
vegetarian dinner of vegetables, rice and beans in tomato sauce.
After diner the evening talk turns
to one of Tom’s favorite subjects.
“Did I tell you guys about the time
I got giardia in Nicaragua? It was toooo-ta-ly awful. I had the shits for
weeks. I lost thirty pounds…”
At least he waited until after dinner
to share this. I leave and go upstairs to read.
