I Took A Trip...of DEATH

For the past week or two I’ve been on break from teaching. At first I found it a bit frustrating, as I was beginning to settle into a pretty solid groove. I wasn’t sure what to do with so much free time and no fraternity brothers wanting to go to happy hours. Well, as luck would have it, during my previous vacation around Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar, I met a German fellow, Bjorn (after the Swede phenom Bjorn Borg, of course), who was living near Bukoba. His tenure as a forestry intern was ending a few days ago, so we made plans to hang out for his last hurrah and return to Bukoba together so he could catch a ferry out of this joint.
Bjorn was staying in a community called Omurushaka, which is about 120 kilometers from Bukoba (you do the math). Of course, the only possible method of travel from Bukoba to Omurushaka is my old friend, the bus. I was given two options though- a minibus (a.k.a. dala-dala) or a big poppa like the one I rode to Njombe. The day before I planned on going, I went to the stand and asked what time either would be departing. Apparently on Saturdays they only leave at 6am or 7am. Great. I show up bright and early the next morning, and some dude grabs my arm. He remembered me from the day before, and proceeded to haul me through the throng of other dudes like him, all trying desperately to find passengers for their respective vehicles. He leads me to a dala-dala (so long, choice), kicks someone out of the front seat and in I go. I’ll tell you what, despite all my plans, the three hour ride was shockingly comfortable. For the second half the road was dirt and potholes and there were four of us up front, but I managed to hang onto the shotgun seat, so everything worked out.
When I arrived, Bjorn gave me a run-down of the plans for the next few days. Among other things, the plans included us slaughtering a few chickens for his farewell dinner. This was a bit ironic, as just a week before Aaron and I received memos from the Peace Corps office discussing that scourge, the avian flu. The memos told us not to handle live chickens and, whatever else we do, definitely not to slaughter them. Aaron and I shrugged off the warning, as we haven’t so much as touched a chicken since we arrived here. Well, I’ve got Mr. TamiFlu Vaccine flowing in my veins, so I wasn’t too worried, mabye even a little eager. In the afternoon, we went to pick out our victims from the market. Turns out live chickens cost less than three dollars here, so I could have gotten one for the Christmas exchange quite easily. Live and learn. We asked for the chickens which would taste the most delicious after frying, and were given possibly the ugliest chicken that even lived, and a normal looking one. I’ll get ahead of myself and say that the ugly one became far and away the most delicious fried chicken I’ve had since arriving here. I wonder if there’s a correlation…? That same evening was the dinner, so when we got back, we prepared ourselves for the slaughter. Bjorn had two choices of killing instruments- a big machete or his Swiss Army knife. One was sharper, but the other one was bigger. In the end he opted for the sharp Swiss Army method. I was a bit disappointed. I didn’t bring any clothes that would look good with blood spatter, so I relegated myself to the role of photographer (yeah, you should check my pictures page). He started with the ugly chicken, because it seemed easier to kill I suppose. What went wrong, you ask? Well, the goal of slaughtering a chicken is to kill it as fast as possible, by beheading it. So what happens if you only cut through half the neck? The chicken flops around like crazy, spraying blood everywhere as it struggles for life. I was a bit stunned by the spectacle of a chicken with its head hanging by a thread flopping all over the place, it was more than a bit chaotic and macabre. The Tanzanian man who was instructing us started yelling and basically tackled the chicken and ripped the rest of the head off and held onto it for its final throes. I was in awe, and also felt like less of a man. Who tackles a dying chicken? A really manly man, that's who. So that was it, one down. So what went wrong on the second try? Bjorn learned his lesson on severing the head completely, so that wasn’t a problem. I said that the man who helped us held down the first one for its final muscular spasms. The standard way of doing this is to straddle the chicken and step on its two wings. Well, Bjorn stood on the wings, made the cut, and then forgot to stand still and keep the now headless chicken pinned. What follow was one of the most unsettling things I’ve even seen. As far as I know, when a body goes into death throes, the motions are very jerky, spasmodic. So imagine my shock as the corpse slowly, deliberately rose from its spread-eagle position on the ground and gradually came to its feet, wings at its sides. It then leisurely began to open its wings again, as it stood perfectly still on its two feet, without a head. This took maybe twenty seconds in total, and the entire time blood is spurting vertically out of its neck with each heartbeat. Once its wings were spread, I think the body made an attempt at flying, but only managed to get a foot or two off the ground before it lost all control and careened off the porch and into a tree. It was amazing. During this whole time, we all had those stupefied smiles you get when something ridiculous that you don't understand is happening (like when I found out the Seahawks made it to the superbowl). The rest of the slaughter proceeded without any incident, and Bjorn’s house help (he supported the economy, too) fried them up for us. Like I said, the ugly one was awesome.
The next day we went on a little hike, through a valley near his house to a river. I have a picture of the river, which was not really a river at all. From up on the rim of the basin, it was a strange light green ribbon cutting through the middle of a sparse forest of banana trees. Bjorn explained that the color was due to papyrus growing in the river. Well, we threaded our way into the valley, past many unsuspecting farmers who were bewildered to see two giant mzungu (he is even taller than I am) crashing through their backyards. Eventually we reached the river. I have heard stories about how muddy the Mississippi is, but I’ll wager that this one has it beat hands down. The cattle trail we were following continued right onto the river and all the way across it. I don’t know if all papyrus-growing rivers are like this, but the surface was dense and spongy, like walking on a giant Twinkie. I kept wondering if some beast would jump up from underneath and carry me down with it. Maybe a hippo… Or maybe some quicksand-type hole would swallow me silently to the bottom of the papyrus jungle. Well, we made it to the other side without any incident, after treading very carefully. The scenery was bizarre in this area, the ground looking parched yet having abundant foliage. It was a nice diversion of a day.
That night, we were all excited to go to what Bjorn called “the pork place”. I don’t know why, but the slang term for pork here is “kiti moto” which literally translates as “the hot seat”. Actually, now maybe I do know why…ahem, we‘ll get to that. We show up and order us some fried pork (we ordered by the kilo, it was very masculine). It came out by itself on this big plate and it was a veritable mountain of fried pork cutlets, I wish I would’ve remembered to bring my camera. We all dug in to the deliciousness that is fried pork. That was all well and good. Flash forward five hours. Its now one in the morning, and I’m rolling back and forth in my bed with the worst stomach pain I can remember. (That’s not quite true. Once at the fraternity I was a little drunk and ate about fifteen of those long jerky tube things right before going to bed. I literally couldn’t move the next day.) I won’t go into the details, but I wasn’t able to eat for another two long arduous days. Just the thought of that mound of glistening pork goodness was enough to send me spiraling into nausea. Ugh. Well, its all over. I’ve returned none the worse for wear, although Mama Shukuru says I look too skinny now and wants me to eat lots of bananas.
That was it for my trip. In two days I go to Kampala, Uganda for a week. Let’s cross our fingers that it is just as eventful, huh? And again, if you aren’t my parents or brother and you do more than just skim this atrociously long posts, I thank you. Peace from the Corps.