Village Chicken

“What do you want for dinner, babe?” he asks.

I pause, his increasingly liberal use of that particular endearment, which falls from his mouth as naturally as water, jarring me a bit. It brings back a few too many memories I’m not in the mood to recount, but I shake it off. I have a gorgeous shirtless man in a sarong, in my hut, asking me what I want for dinner. As in he’s going to cook for me, again.

This is becoming quite the set up. I live my village life, he lives his vacation life and we meet in the middle for dinner, which he prepares as we have a glass of wine and discuss the intricacies of our days and our lives. I have no idea how he pulls these dinners together, what with food and planning meals being one of my less than strong points, but whatever he cooks is amazing, even through we eat it cross legged on my floor. It encompasses so much of what I’ve missed so desperately since being here that I often find myself in a delirium of happiness. It’s a time when life is exceptionally beautiful.

He’s got his hand on the refrigerator door, which his extreme eco consciousness will not allow him to open until I’ve responded. He’s also like that with water, hyper vigilant of how much trickles by as he uses it, in a pretty extreme contrast to my habit of listening to the sound of my toilet running or sink dripping as a comforting symphony. Needless to say there are a few things about the current arrangement that would eventually have to be ironed out, but I remind myself that it is temporary, which seems to make nothing matter too much.

I look up from my position on the floor of my hut, where I am making a sad attempt at painting a village scene with watercolors, an exercise that appears to be the extent of my inspired attempts at creativity. I raise my eyebrow incredulously in answer. He knows what’s in there better than I do, hell he put most of the food there.

“I dunno.” I finally answer. “That’s your arena, remember? Whereas mine is generally cleaning and…movie selection?” I looking around as though to search for some other task that falls within my realm of expertise but just shrug and smile. “But so long as there’s red wine to go with it, I’m sure I don’t care.” How we came to be in this pseudo relationship so quickly is beyond me. But I miss the feeling, and despite the temporary nature of this one, I let myself fall into its familiar comfort.

He smiles, ruffling my hair. “Why don’t we go into the village and have someone kill and clean us a chicken, and I’ll roast it over the fire I’ve been using to cook the beans outside. I noticed there’s lots of firewood around since they’ve been cutting space for the electricity.”

“Sure” I said. In my mind I was thinking this shouldn’t be too difficult, there’s always chickens running around, roaming as free as the livestock that threaten the safety of any road journey in a car in this country. “Village chicken. Good idea.”

My usual source of chicken generally tends to be when Bana Ba Metsi (the school for naughty boys up the road about 55 kms) puts their “chicken for sale” sign up when I happen to be driving by the school with someone who is willing to stop. Or when I get it from Maun (boneless, skinless, and heavenly) or best yet, from Nandos or Barcellos in Maun. They cook it up for me with peri peri sauce. But in Seronga, the chicken selection is… Limited. It’s a bit of a delicacy, despite all the little bastards crowing all night and waking me up in the morning.

So we set out. I was lucky enough to remember the verb for “to buy” and was able to impress him with my Setswana skills, except for the fact that “chicken” and “grandma” sound very similar in Setswana. I quickly found several people confused as to why I wanted to buy their grandmother. They became even more alarmed when they thought I not only wanted them to sell me their grandmother, but I wanted them to kill and clean her first. I had a few younger drunk guys who looked like they may have been willing, depending on how much Chibuku they would be able to purchase with the proceeds of the transaction.

Once I sorted out the chicken/grandma misunderstanding we had slightly less confusion, but still no bird. I went into all of the yards whose occupants I greet every morning on the way to the clinic but no one had any chickens to sell. The Zambian was confused; he had never been in an African village in any of the many countries he where he had lived where he hadn’t been able to quickly and cheaply procure a village chicken.

After about a half hour he began to make a plan B for dinner, but at this point I was on a mission. Like the homicidal apple trees from “The Wizard Of Oz,” there was no way, under any circumstances that I was willing to admit that Seronga was anything less than what it ought to be, and certainly not that it was lacking in any of the quintessential qualities of an “African village”. My little village was just as African and contained just as many village chickens as any other, if not more so. We WOULD have roast chicken for dinner.

Out came the stubborn streak, in addition to the cell phone. I started making calls to supplement my impromptu village tour. Many people told me to head out to “the lands,” or to try this person or that one, but none of these leads proved fruitful. I began asking after (and chasing) the chickens running around through the road, but when I asked, no one could sell me THAT chicken as it seems they weren’t the owner.

“What if I just killed this chicken right here?” I began to ask.

The old ladies laugh at my exaggerated pantomime, not even bothering to call my bluff.

Finally, about 45 minutes after the mission began my phone trilled with a number I don’t recognize. It’s the lady who owns the tuck shop where I buy my cell phone airtime when I’m between trips to Maun. She wants me to come to her shop in ten minutes and she’ll take me to the place where I can get the chicken. I smile triumphantly at the Zambian.
We collected some firewood from the trees that had been chopped down to make way for the electricity and walked towards the tuck shop.

I later heard that some of my female friends in the village-who had exhibited an acutely strange combination of thrilled joy for me that I was seen publicly with a man, and jealousy that I was seen publicly with a white man, were utterly scandalized when they witnessed us walking down the road, with the Zambian carrying the bulk of the firewood while I carried the dead cleaned chicken in a plastic bag at arm’s length.

“Lorato.” They chided me the next day in hushed tones, looking around to make certain no one else was listening as they recounted the details of my scandal. “Why did you let that man carry your firewood? That is a woman’s work! Now he is not going to think you are a good woman and he’s not going to want to marry you! You better hope he will have sex with you and you will get pregnant so at least he knows you can make babies.” They advised me earnestly. There have been few greater joys here in my time in Seronga than when I told them that not only did he carry the firewood but he cooked the chicken, and that, sorry girls, I had no intention of marrying him, or even trying to get him to marry me. They were mortified. I was ecstatic.

We arrived at the tuck shop where a gaggle of teenaged girls from the junior secondary school had gathered to buy flavored ice, sold in plastic sandwich baggies and a common staple of the children of Seronga’s diet. The tuck shop owner had decided that rather than close down the shop herself these girls would take us to the place to get the chicken. As they were teenage girls, there was no end to the giggling and nudging each other as they looked back at the Zambian and I. He reached out as though to take my hand and I slapped his away, but any hope I had of the village not assuming he was my boyfriend was futile anyways so I just shook my head and smirked at him.

We finally arrived at the house where one of the girls announced our intention of buying a chicken to the ancient woman seated on the ground cutting up a massive bloody carp (called bauble fish here, but still with just as many whiskers as a typical American catfish). She gestured as though to offer some of the fish for us to buy as well and I shook my head and turned away from the bleeding mound, more certain than ever that I would indeed pay whatever they asked for them to clean in addition to killing our chicken.

It was time for the show. A few of the girls began to chase the chickens around the yard, their embarrassment of their rural way of life when witnessed by two Americans overruled by their fear and respect for the punishment that might be inflected by the old woman on the ground if they did not successfully catch and kill this chicken, thus earning the old women money for traditional beer. One of the girls finally caught the chicken by the neck and thrust it triumphantly at us. I looked at the Zambian questioningly, having no idea in my pretty little head about what constitutes the ideal qualities of a village chicken.

“It’s all going to be tough anyways, this is Village Chicken,” He shrugged, describing it as though it were a name brand. “It doesn’t matter.”

I nodded at the girl to hand the chicken off to what might be either her mother or grandmother, who then made as though she was going to break its neck right there until I quickly covered my ears and shut my eyes. She laughed at my gory murder movie reaction and walked through the fence to the courtyard near the house from which I promptly heard a sickening last cluck and a snap. Seconds later she emerged with the dead chicken, its lifeless head now a handle by which to carry the bird. I shuddered and asked one of the teenaged girls to ask her to clean it. She looked pained, which cleared right up at the offer of ten additional pula.

Within twenty minutes we were on our way back to the hut, and that evening, we did indeed enjoy a roast village chicken. My capacity for cooking was of course, not built, but I do have an idea of who to go to next time I have someone offer to make it…. Maybe.