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Monday, November 28, 2011

This little piggy...

It all started when somebody realized it was time to start thinking about Thanksgiving.  Putting together a classic Turkey Day feast is a challenge in Kenya - the main obstacle being the main course.  Needless to say, plastic wrapped Butterball deliciousness complete with temperature pin are, well, nowhere to be found.  There are, however, if you look hard enough, plenty of real live birds walking around with no U.S. President to grant them clemency at the last minute.

I think you can see where this is going.

Yup.  You'll soon be reading about how Voldemort (The Gobbler?  We're still working on names.), our newest compound resident, will be roasty-toasty and on his way toward providing us with holiday nourishment.

Well, not this post.  But all this talk about our upcoming holiday got us thinking - mostly about other animals we could turn into food.  And that turned into a pig roast.

With this pig:

Oink!
Cute, no?  (Say no - you'll be happier if you find him ugly.)

We kept him at a friend's house out of respect for some of our vegetarian colleagues.  That morning, we went for the slaughter.  A man named Amos came, took a look at the chef's knives we had brought, laughed, and broke out his panga (machete).  After that it all happened pretty quickly.  They hog tied his back legs and secured the rope to a tree trunk.  Someone grabbed his mouth and ears and pulled him out taught.  Then one big hack, some sawing, a few more quick cuts and the head was tossed away.  They dragged the body over to some banana leaves where it twitched for the next twenty minutes or so.  (By twitched, I mean thrashed.  It was pretty gnarly.)

At this point, I regained a level of self-awareness I hadn't entirely recognized having lost.  I was about 15 feet further back than where I started at the first hack.

After that, the headless body was shaved, gutted, and dismembered.

And subsequently devoured.

De-lish.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Rules of the Road

The first time I drove a car, I was fifteen-and-a-half and in my parent's wood-paneled minivan.  I had just gotten my temps ("permit" for non-Ohioan readers) and was enormously excited.  Excitement that quickly turned to terror as the speedometer crept past ten, past fifteen.  I felt like I'd never traveled so fast in my life.

I got over it pretty quickly - learned to drive a standard so I could take my brother's pick-up to school and, by the time I was nineteen, I'd earned my first ticket for going eighty in a fifty-five... in the snow.  I considered making the argument that I'd heard had won in court in Ohio once, that my speed was appropriate for the conditions, but the snow was going to make that a hard sell.

Fast-forward another seven years:  I'm in Kenya and I feel like I'm going through the same process of fear turned to reckless irresponsibility.  Some might compare driving here to skydiving - it's terrifying until you take that leap.  Then, it's exhilarating and you get a great view to boot.  But, I'd argue that it's much more like a prolonged game of chicken.  There's a mixed-up feeling of anticipation, anxiety, and antagonism from whoever happens to be coming toward you.  All the while, there's a palpable sense of impending doom.

To mitigate my dread, I've devised a few "Rules of the Road" that I chant like a mantra whenever I find myself behind the wheel (it's true - I'm pretty sure my Kenyan colleagues think I'm crazy):

1. Don't hit the people.
     This is a bigger challenge than you'd think.  On foot, on bike, on motorcycle or pulling carts, there are more people than cars at any given moment.  There are actually dirt walkways on either side of most roads, but from toddlers to the elderly, walking on the tarmac with the cars and trucks is somehow vastly preferable.

2. Stay on the road. 
     Staying on the road might seem painfully obvious, but it gets tricky here.  First off, the edge of the tarmac is more fjord-like than anything else, plunging up to two feet.  Plus, cars and trucks pass each other so haphazardly that it's not uncommon to find yourself in an actual (rather than metaphorical) game of chicken.  In those cases, I throw this rule out the window and leave the road quite happily.

3. Avoid roadway obstructions.
     Obstacles are a special part of the driving experience in Kenya.  Leaving aside people, animals, and vehicles, obstacles are often pot-holes but can also be tipped-over trucks, patches of missing tarmac, and police checks complete with tire spikes.  All of these require deft steering, but only under the rarest of circumstances do you ever consider actually stopping.

4. Swerve left or, more generally, ignore all instincts.
     Ignoring your instincts is key.  This applies not only during close encounters where years of driving in the US has taught me to swerve right, but also includes much more pedestrian things like: go ahead and pass on that hill, don't turn off your car while fueling up if you've been having trouble getting it to start, and for goodness sake, take that key, start that car, and enter the roadway... even when every fiber of your being tells you not to be a fool and just stay home.

Happy Trails!

Another roadway obstacle: tarmac waves!