Those poor delicious creatures

I made it home at about 7:20, an hour later than I planned. I missed my stop. Anyway, I grabbed the chicken out of my souq (outdoor market) bag to put in the fridge and it was warm. I was a little worried. I thought maybe the chicken had gone bad. I thought that it was the heat of the day that made it warm, but then I realized that it had just died.

It was less than an hour ago when I bought the chicken. It was my first meat buying experience by myself. Well, Naima* was with me, my PCV friend, but I wasn't with my Tam teacher so it doesn't count. I'm planning on making chicken adobo for my host family tomorrow so I needed about 2 kilos of chicken. That's about a whole chicken's worth of meat.

So Naima and I walked up to the counter. There was one man up front and two other men in the tiny butcher shop behind him. Adjacent to the tiny butcher shop was a wooden cart with about 7 to 10 chickens huddled together. It smelled fowl. (I can think of a silly pun right now but I'll leave that up to my dad :-)). I asked the man at the counter for 2 kilos worth of chicken meat. Then he ducked under the counter through a tiny door leading outside to where the live chickens were gathered. He grabbed one and went back behind the counter, and placed the chicken on the scale. The chicken was protesting the whole time, making whatever noise chickens make. The scale read 2.5 kilos. He asked if that was okay since he didn't have a smaller chicken. I said, 'yeah, no problem.' He passed the chicken back to the other man behind the curtain divider.

I turned to talk to Naima. She was clearly troubled by the experience. Naima turned her back to the butcher shop as soon as the man grabbed the chicken from the wooden cart. I heard the large knife chop down on the chicken's neck. Naima said that she heard the chicken cry its last cry. She said, 'yeah, I'd make that sound too if my neck was about to be chopped off.' I actually didn't hear that cry. I was oblivious to the cry, because I was talking to Naima, but maybe she wasn't listening to me.

My response to her was, “Those poor delicious creatures.”

Instead of being troubled by the experience, I was grateful for the it. I was happy to buy a chicken from a Moroccan butcher shop. After all, where does meat come from anyway? … Animals.

Why should people, like Americans, be shielded from the reality of meat? People who eat meat should know where their meat comes from and how it's processed. I was happy that the chicken was killed fresh, right in front of me. I felt like I knew what I was getting. I shared these thoughts with Naima. I hope I wasn't being too insensitive, but I knew she wasn't a vegetarian.

These guys were efficient too. It only took about 15 minutes from live to ready-to-cook. They even cleaned and chopped the chicken for me.

When I paid the butcher, I said, “bismillah (in the name of God).” This is a common God phrase used in many situations, but this time I thought about what I said: In the name of God, I'm paying this man for this meat that will nourish me and my host family. God has truly provided for me. I am grateful.

By the way, the photo on your upper right is me giving my first dental hygiene lesson. It was unexpected. I didn't think I was going to talk, but there I was... See! Tell you more about it later. I also had my first English class yesterday. It went better than I expected. Tell you more about that later, too.

*not her real name