How to slaughter a chicken

Celebrating holidays in Tanzania aren’t quite the same as they are in America, but we do what we can to share our culture with the Tanzanians and not forget what’s important to us. The first holiday we celebrated was Halloween. Now, it wasn’t until I tried to explain the concept of Halloween to Tanzanians that I realized how truly strange it is. We dress small children up in costumes and take them around to strangers’ houses to collect candy… sounds weird, right?

Lauren and I (aka the Mexican and the random girl from the 80's)

About a month later, after school had wrapped up and Form I and III students had completed their district annual exams, it was Turkey Day! Now, since I had school on Thanksgiving, I was unable to celebrate on the actual day (in fact, I spent the day grading exams), but a few other Ed volunteers met up in Iringa on Saturday to have our own little Thanksgiving feast.

We started the meal off with appetizers of homemade guacamole and salsa, homemade chips and veggie slices with ranch dip. We needed our strength to tackle the task that was the main meal.

The appetizer spread

Feeding each other. yea, we're integrating

 There aren’t any turkeys to be had here, but there are chickens aplenty, so we bought one. A live one J

We had to walk across the village to buy it, then tied up its feet and carried it home in a plastic sack. When we arrived home, we put some water on the jiko to boil and hung the chicken upside down for a while (apparently it is supposed to calm it down and it seemed to work.)

Joe, picking up tonight's dinner

The walk back to the house, chicken under arm

Nobody puts chicken in the corner!

Chicken meditation

When the water got to a boil, we moved the upside down chicken to a spot suitable for blood spatter. Joe, dressed in kanga apron and armed with a knife, stepped up to do the deed. It was pretty quick and not as much blood as any of us expected. After waiting for a few minutes for the blood to drain out, we untied it and threw it in a basin where we poured hot water over it. This helps loosen up the feathers so they can be plucked out. After several minutes, we had all the feathers removed and cut off the feet. 

Joe, getting ready to chinga kuku

and...

headless chicken

hot water helps remove the feathers

they remove pretty easily and quickly

Then it was time to clean out the insides. Now, our instructions told us that puncturing the entrails smells terrible, so this was a delicate process. And in that process we found an EGG!  We cleaned out the rest of the innards and rinsed it off for cooking.

ready to clean it out... doesn't look like it was alive 5 minutes ago 

Lauren with the bonus egg we found

Cleaning out the entrails

cleaned up and ready to cook

The oven we made to cook the chicken

roasting over the hot coals

It was delicious and I must say, we were pretty proud of ourselves.

Table set up

The delicious spread

The meal was accompanied with buttermilk biscuits, mashed potatoes and gravy, and fruit salad

The moral of this post... I will never take advantage of frozen turkeys at Thanksgiving, but I really enjoyed the experience of a meal all from scratch!