On Ashley’s return we took advantage of some of the goodies
that her Mum had brought out, and we cracked open a sherbet dip. This then escalated
rather quickly from eating it to being really immature and deciding to relive
our younger years... can you guess? Yeah, we sniffed it.
As anyone else stupid enough to do this will know, allowing sherbet up your nostrils is ALWAYS a bad idea; things fizz where things should never fizz, your brain hurts and I swear on my life my eyeball felt like it was going to explode. We had fun though. Apart from the next two hours where I felt like the left side of my brain was spazming and I could taste blood. Kids, don’t try this at home.
As anyone else stupid enough to do this will know, allowing sherbet up your nostrils is ALWAYS a bad idea; things fizz where things should never fizz, your brain hurts and I swear on my life my eyeball felt like it was going to explode. We had fun though. Apart from the next two hours where I felt like the left side of my brain was spazming and I could taste blood. Kids, don’t try this at home.
On a more mature note this week I had a Skype interview with
my first choice University, The University of York! I have my doubts with how
well this interview went because when the guy asked me what my favourite film
was (bearing in mind I’m applying for TV and Film Production) the names of all
the films I’ve ever watched in my life dissolved right there in my brain. I
couldn’t think of anything. Call me a sceptic but I really don’t think I made
the best of impressions, all I can do now is cross my fingers and hope they’ll
pick me regardless of my idiocy. Oh well.
On Friday we had a Red Nose Day/Birthday Day at Injabulo!
Nelsiwe’s birthday was going to be on Saturday 16th so we would miss
it; therefore we threw her a little birthday bash with cake, relight-able
candles, red noses and polony sandwiches... what more do you want?!
We explained Comic Relief and Red Nose Day to all the children, but no one (including Nelsiwe) had ever heard of it... Clearly Comic Relief needs to get it’s ass to Swaziland! So even though the concept of the day was lost on them we cracked out the red paint and gave them all little red noses, which they loved. We also put on some kids songs and had a little kids ‘disco’ for the last half hour of preschool... this quickly turned into Ashley being dragged to the floor and piled on my about 30 4 year olds with my fate to quickly follow. You wouldn’t think it but a large group of 3-4 year olds are pretty strong when they have the right determination, and it doesn’t take them long to reduce you to the concrete floor and crush the living daylights out of you.
 |
| Swazi's are always happy with chocolate.... ;) |
We explained Comic Relief and Red Nose Day to all the children, but no one (including Nelsiwe) had ever heard of it... Clearly Comic Relief needs to get it’s ass to Swaziland! So even though the concept of the day was lost on them we cracked out the red paint and gave them all little red noses, which they loved. We also put on some kids songs and had a little kids ‘disco’ for the last half hour of preschool... this quickly turned into Ashley being dragged to the floor and piled on my about 30 4 year olds with my fate to quickly follow. You wouldn’t think it but a large group of 3-4 year olds are pretty strong when they have the right determination, and it doesn’t take them long to reduce you to the concrete floor and crush the living daylights out of you.
 |
| Red Noses! |
 |
| Cuties. |
This brings us to the weekend, and the section of this blog
where I reveal the source of the title; on Saturday Ashley and I set off in the
blazing midday heat to walk for over an hour to buy a chicken. In lowveld Swaziland
you can come by a pretty hefty living chicken for E45 (£3.20), so that’s
exactly what we did. With Mary (one of the teachers from Moriah Centre) we
ended the chicken-less leg (no pun intended) of our journey in Game 5, one of
the villages in Big Bend. We entered a large building that was built by the
community to be a preschool, but due to no one wanting to pay school fees it is
how used to keep chickens. Crazy right. Anyway, after Mary chased the fattest
chicken around a preschool classroom we paid the E45 for our poultry and set
off back for Moriah Centre.
Ashley began the stint with the chicken cradled in her arms and she made it successfully
down the road for about 500 metres before our dinner tried to make a ‘Chicken
Run’, hahaa. This resulted in chicken squawks
coupled with whatever panicked noise Ashley was making as she tried her best
not to let our dinner escape; holding the chicken by its feet, it was dangling
upside down and flapping frantically until Mary came to the rescue... later we
discovered that during this debacle the chicken had broken its left wing. Yeah,
we’re not great at this stuff.
 |
| Some crazy preschool... |
So we finally returned back to Moriah Centre, covered in
minimal amounts of excrement with one ruffled and highly traumatised chicken in
tow. It then met its fate, or should it
be called its destiny? After all this chicken had been bred, born and fed for
the sole reason of being sold for food... so I reckon destiny is a more
appropriate word to use.
Ashley and I watched Mary as she sawed through the squirming chickens’ neck with an unfortunately tiny knife, and looked on in awe and disgust as the white feathers were stained a bright red and blood squirted out in tiny jets from the main arteries. It was then tossed into a bucket of boiling hot water to be plucked, it was still quivering and partly alive until Mary ripped the rest of the head off and proceeded in pulling off all the feathers and cutting off the feet. Honestly it is one of the grimmest things I’ve ever watched, body parts were flying everywhere, the head was still dangling and it was starting to cook as it sat in the boiling water, so I kept getting these wafts of partly cooking chicken. The next stage was Mary disappearing inside to wash the chicken out and then returning to us with a bowl filled with all of the chickens’ insides and its feet, yum.
Before I got to Swaziland I wouldn’t even eat meat off the bone, it was chicken
breast and sausages all the way... I am now over that fad as hostel doesn’t
really allow for picky eaters. But being presented with an animal’s entrails is
a completely different story all together; to my credit I sucked it up and got
on with it. So I have now eaten a whole chicken intestine and half a chicken
foot... and you know what, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Intestine
tastes exactly like chicken meat and I could eat it again if I REALLY had to,
but the foot is another story; the meat is stretchy and rubbery and you’re
literally gnawing on a claw – you can’t pretend it’s anything else but. I did
not enjoy the foot.
Ashley and I watched Mary as she sawed through the squirming chickens’ neck with an unfortunately tiny knife, and looked on in awe and disgust as the white feathers were stained a bright red and blood squirted out in tiny jets from the main arteries. It was then tossed into a bucket of boiling hot water to be plucked, it was still quivering and partly alive until Mary ripped the rest of the head off and proceeded in pulling off all the feathers and cutting off the feet. Honestly it is one of the grimmest things I’ve ever watched, body parts were flying everywhere, the head was still dangling and it was starting to cook as it sat in the boiling water, so I kept getting these wafts of partly cooking chicken. The next stage was Mary disappearing inside to wash the chicken out and then returning to us with a bowl filled with all of the chickens’ insides and its feet, yum.
 |
 |
| 'Bon Appetit! |
Anyway, it’s a different experience and I came out of the other end alive. So maybe saying yes to weird things isn’t a bad thing!
After the slaughter day we had a more civilised say on Sunday;
we had a lovely braii and some drinks with a friend from hostel and one of his
schoolmates from Sisekelo. He’s origionally from the USA but moved to Swaziland
when he was 10, he’s now in the RAF and is based in the UK; he tries to visit
Swaziland every year so we basically intruded on their reunion. We had a lovely
time though, some proper bits of chicken washed down with quite a bit of cider.
Perfect end to a weekend.
Love you all...
Kate xx
P.S. The laminator works, it’s a miracle.
 |
| P.P.S - this is my new room-mate, he's a gecko and he eats the mosquito's... I still get bitten but definitely less than I did before! |
No comments:
Post a Comment