04 May 2005 - 11:41
The cat's out of the bag - Virginia is leaving in a week to go back to America for a month before she flies to Morocco for a six-week Arabic class in June. Everyone up here has known for a while, but she finally told PC this week. In honor of her impending departure, one of our neighbors brought chicken over for us. Actually, it was a cock. A LIVE cock. It's just Virgina and I in the house right now since everyone else is in America, and neither one of us has killed or prepared a chicken before, so we did a little research on the subject on the internet. Still not feeling very confident, we enlisted the help of a friend, who showed me how to slit its throat (we're a little short on axes in this town, since there are NO TREES). I bled it for a little while, and then another friend who passed by the house helped me boil, pluck, and gut it. Virginia and I took care of the rest on our own, and managed to make a delicious chicken noodle soup.
That's the "death" part. The "destruction" refers to my right heel, which I injured while we were chasing the rooster all over town. The problem started when we opened the door to the shower room where we were keeping the cock and Rockus decided that she wanted to have a little bite of rooster, which resulted in the rooster flying out of the compound, into the neighbor's yard, then down the street, over a couple walls, into two more compounds, and finally into the market, where one of our minions (kids we pay to do stuff for us) caught him and returned him to our house. But not before I managed to fall off a pile of rocks I had climbed upon to try to grab the bird when he was strutting on our neighbor's wall, which resulted in me gashing my foot on a rock and having to go to the hospital. Now I have to limp everywhere I go because I can't put pressure on it. At least the Peace Corps is going to reimburse me for taxis for a couple days...
