To Kill A Chicken... (or two)

One afternoon, a couple weeks into training, I was sitting with my mãe behind the house when my host-brother Chaide came by with a large white bucket. I figured it was filled with water. Until my mãe dragged it over to peer inside, and a white-feathered head poked it’s beak out.

I leaned over the bucket and saw a second head as well, and more white feathers beneath. “How many are there in here?” I asked my mãe.

“Four!” she said, starting to pull the chickens out and set them on the ground. They timidly waddled around a bit, and settled against the wall. Then she pointed at me with a wide smile, and said “And today YOU get to kill them!”, as if it was some kind of treat. Which, for a lot of Mozambicans (and some Americans), it is.

Awaiting their fate

 I’d known this would happen at some point- a lot of other volunteers in our group had already had to slaughter chickens for dinner with their families. The stories hadn’t made me any more keen to do it myself- lots of them had to make do with dull knives, or other dubious methods, and it didn’t sound like such a fun time. With my own family, I’d been starting to think I was off the hook. After all, I’d already been here a couple weeks, and my mãe had never mentioned it. I’d started to think that maybe my family didn’t slaughter their own chickens after all, and just bought ready-frozen chicken- though I know buying meat that way is expensive here.

I made a few casual attempts to get out of it. “Oh, uh, I don’t really want to…”

My mãe laughed. “You don’t like to kill? Are you afraid?” she asked, grinning, like this was the funniest idea ever.

“Well- I mean, I don’t want to do it wrong, and hurt the chicken-“

My mãe dismissed this with a hand wave. “Chickens don’t have feelings. You want to go hungry? What will you do when you live alone? Are you going to just eat couve every day? ONLY couve, today, and the next day, and the next day-“

“That’s fine!” I interjected. “And I can eat beans too. It’s fine. I don’t need meat. Lots of people are vegetarian!”

This she refused to believe, no matter how much I insisted it was true. “Only very few people are vegetarian,” she said, “Very few. Maybe one or two in each group of volunteers. And they only become vegetarians after coming to Mozambique.“ She shook her head at the idea of people making such silly decisions.

“No really!” I tried, “I know lots of vegetarians in the U.S.! And I don’t mind not eating meat either. It’s really totally fine-“

But my mãe wouldn’t hear any of it. Finally I figured that if in the past I’d been willing to eat chicken slaughtered by other people, it didn’t make much of a practical difference if I was the one who did it or not. These chickens’ fate was sealed either way- and besides, the reality is that if I want or need to eat meat at home at all once I get to my site, the cheapest and most hygienic option is to learn to prepare it myself. Self-sufficiency for the win, y’all.

I insisted on watching my mãe do it first before trying it myself. She picked up one of the chickens and brought it over to the edge of the yard. With a knife she neatly swept clear a flat patch of dirt, then sharpened the blade on the nearby rocks. With her feet she held down the chicken’s feet and wings, and gripped the head in her left hand. “Easy!” she proclaimed. “Very, easy.” Then, without any further ceremony, used the knife to saw halfway through the chicken’s throat.

It really did go faster and “easier” than I expected. Within about five seconds the chicken was dead, and though it did give a few of those infamous post-mortem twitches, it was nothing too crazy. My mãe let the little bit of blood drain from the neck, swept some dirt over the blood, then carried the chicken over to a pot of hot water she’d had ready. She dunked the chicken in the hot water for less than a minute, then took it out and immediately started plucking the feathers. “See?” she said, “Easy!”. Um, okay. We’ll see about that.

Next it was my turn. I went to grab a chicken. But I wasn’t sure how to pick it up. “Uh, mãe, how do I…”

“By the wings!” she called.

Okay. I picked one up. It was a lot more timid than I expected, and barely put up a fight. I brought it over to the yard, and awkwardly tried to hold it down the way my mãe had. I was trying not to hurt it, so the wings kept escaping from under my foot. “Step on the wings, here!” my mãe commanded impatiently, and I did, wincing as the chicken protested.

“And I hold the head, like this?” I asked nervously.

“Yes, yes,” my mãe responded.

“And I cut, here?” I said, not wanting to prolong the situation if I unwittingly cut the wrong part of the neck or something.

“Yes, yes, yes,” mãe said, unconcerned.

Okay… well, there was no point in waiting any longer. I sawed at the neck as quickly as I could, it seemed to work, and in not much more time than it had taken when my mãe did it, it was done. A few more twitches from the chicken, and we set to plucking it and setting it in the basin of clean water with the first.

Plucked, cleaned, and ready for cooking and/or freezing

While I was still plucking my chicken, my mãe killed the third, then came and told me that the fourth was still my responsibility- two for two. Okay, though it hadn't been the funnest thing ever, the first one really hadn’t gone so badly. I could do this. “Easy, easy.”

I went and got the fourth chicken, held it down, and set to cutting the neck as quickly as I could. However, in my attempt to do it fast, this time I accidentally cut through the neck completely, decapitating the chicken. Blood spurted from the neck, spraying all over my feet. Meanwhile, both the head and the body were completely freaking out, way more than either of the last three chickens. I still held the head in my left hand because I didn’t want to drop it in the dirt, but oh god I could feel the beak snapping and all the nerves in the head still twitching. And with just one hand free to hold down the body, one wing broke free from my grip and started flapping up and down in my face.

“Uh, mãe? Mãe?!?” I shouted in panic.

“Hmm?” she responded casually, fifteen feet away, her back to me, still calmly plucking the last chicken.

Finally, the poor dead chicken settled down, and I brought it over for plucking and cleaning. As we finished up, my mãe brought over another basin of water, grinning.

“Ah, now Helena is a Mozambican woman!” she said proudly.

I laughed. Uh, sure. We’ll see about that. Maybe once I figure out how to balance a bucket of water on my head too. For now, at least, I’m ready to take at least a few weeks’ break from the slaughterhouse activities, since these four chickens will be frozen to last us for several weeks. Whew! ;)

Xima and 'fresh' chicken from the day's work