Roosters Suck

This was just going to be a private email to Holly, but I thought that a story of this caliber needs to be shared with the world.

**Important note: Arnold is Holly and Dad's rooster.  He's a total asshole.


HollzBallz,

Greetings!! How's everything been going? Nursing school, Jacky, the chickens, the cats? Well I wasn't going to come to the internet cafe today, because it's an hour trek, but I did because something happened this morning that I HAD to tell you about.  So actually there's 2 things that I want to tell you about, I'll start with the slightly less thrilling of the two things.

1.) I found box wine... That's right.  A one liter box of "Don Garcia" which is just cheap red table wine that actually tastes pretty darn good.  And by cheap I mean CHEAP.  A 1 liter box costs 3 Ghana cedi = 2 US dollars.  HELL YES.

2.) Yesterday, after a month of travel, I returned to my host family in Old Tafo.  My host dad proclaimed that he would slaughter a chicken in honor of my coming home.  So I thought, sweet, we'll slaughter a hen, eat it, and it will be delicious.  This morning, when I got up my host brother, Emmanuel or Bub Masterson as I call him, told me it was time to kill the chicken, so I got my camera ready for action.  Host dad walked over to where the chickens were standing together in a group and with incredibly agility snatched up - not one of the hens - BUT THE ROOSTER.  I starred in disbelief as he held the massive rooster in one hand by the base of its wings. 

Important note: During every morning and evening meal, I had to watch this damned rooster have sex with the chickens (definitely against their will) more violently and more frequently than Arnold ever does!  Not only that, but also the jerk crows right outside my room every morning starting at 4AM without fail.  Thus, I have come to hate him even more than Arnold.

So host dad had previously prepared for the slaughter by getting ready a large bowl of boiling water, a massive knife, and large pot of water boiling over the fire.  He walked slowly over to the knife and bowl of boiling water.  He put the chicken on the ground, kept its wings pinned together under one foot, pinned its feet under his other foot, held its head in one hand, and the knife in the other.  With an incredibly swift movement he deftly sliced halfway through the roosters neck.  He continued to hold it still for about 2 minutes, while it bled out into the bowl of hot water.

When it was done bleeding, he took the rooster over to the pot of bowling water and tossed it in.  He left it to boil approximately ten minutes, then pulled it out with a stick.  He proceeded to then completely decapitate the rooster and very skillfully de-feather the body. 

It was such an incredible process, I had to tell you about it.  Especially since we talked about slaughtering Arnold at least once a week.  So tonight I am going to eat rooster, FRESH rooster for dinner.  I will pretend that at the same time you are roasting or maybe bbq'ing Arnold.

MISS YA, BYE FOR NOW :)
Betsy

PC Ghana... Best Decision EVER!

First internet access in over a month!  Time for some serious updates.

I traveled for most of July.  And am STILL traveling actually!  I'm currently in Takoradi, a coastal city in the Western Region.  So here's what's been happening...

Sunday, June 3... Travel to Techiman, Brong Ahafo Region for language training.  We (me + 8 other trainees + 2 trainers)|** stayed in a small community called Ofurikrom outside Techiman with host families.  I totally scored as I got to stay with one of the sub-chiefs and his family.  ("Nana" means chief) So he went by Nana Adams.  His wife's name is Grace; everyone called her Madam Grace.  There were 2 daughters, Ayissa (26) and Kessewwa (13).  Ayissa studied Nutrition at the University of Tamale and is now a chef.  So she cooked for me all week, and the food was AMAZING.  Also, her sense of humor was hysterical, so we joked about men, sex, and booze all week. 

So during the week we did classroom style learning and practical learning (in the market, etc).  I feel like my Twi really improved!  But that's less exciting so I'll tell you more about the good stuff.

Joe, a current volunteer who works with cashew farmers around Techiman, is the bomb, so we hung out with him a lot.  We were all craving an American food fix so we made hot dogs (sort of) and guacamole/ plantain chips at his house one day for lunch... Another night we went over there to drink and managed to construct a very crude but effective game of beer pong.  And for those of you that know me, mixed drink pong, of course.

But I have to tell you the absolute coolest thing we did that week was visit the magic caves.... A older dude named Kwaw walked us around and told us what was what... First we walked up to a beautiful, peaceful teak forrest with rays of light streaming through the canopy onto the soft rich brown earth.  Then Kwaw started yelling, and honestly at first, it scared the shit out of me... I thought "holy shit, wtf is he doing??"  Then he turned to us and explained that he was alerting the spirits of our coming.  Ok, sweet, good idea.  So we walked through the teak trees to a rock mountain/boulder ... Just picture a rock the size of a high school gymnasium.  In the rock there was an opening to a cave about 30 feet high.  We walked into the opening and Kwaw starting clapping like a crazy man and again, scared the shit out of me.  Then a swirl of bats came flying around and out of the cave.  He pointed back into the cave and explained that the chiefs and kings of the old days are buried in there.  Also sweet, hundreds of years worth of dead guys.  And not just any dead guys, African tribal leaders at that. So anyway, we left the cave, and made our way to the top of the gym-sized boulder-mountain.  The view was incredible!  Sort of in between savanna and rain forest.  Oh, also, on the way up to the top we had to crawl through a 10 foot section of cave, an area in which one is not permitted to talk.  That is because the cave is magic and was historically used to protect people in times of war, so the opening can magically close up in case of an attack.  There are magic words that close the opening to the cave, but over the years those words have been forgotten... So to avoid accidentally uttering the magic words and being crushed by rocks, you just don't talk at all!  Spencer bumped his head and accidentally tested out the words "oh fuck." Fortunately they didn't end up being the the correct magic words.  Whew!

**The other trainees I traveled with were Bird, Biddle, Sam, Paul, Amit, Spencer, Ernie, and Tasha.  We called ourselves the "Techi Men."  Our trainers were Papa Moses and Michael.

Ugh, have to leave the internet cafe, but I promise I will post more soon!!