Poor chicken!

The reality of life is that, in this vast animal kingdom of ours, there is something called a food chain. Another reality of life is that those nice cuts of chicken, beef, fish, etc. that lay and wait at the grocery store, in their pretty packaging, used to be, before all of the processing and what-nots, real animals. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a BIG meat eater. In fact, I believe that a meal is not a meal without meat, so this is not going to be a story about to eat meat or not to eat meat, but rather about dignity.

My experience serving in Peace Corps-South Africa, has brought me closer to reality, with respect to where my meat comes from than ever before. In South Africa, mala magodu (cow stomach and intestines) is served at funerals, weddings, and any other traditional function you can think of. Plus, my local grocery store always has a surplus stockpile of it, just in case you have that craving. At my local grocery store, you can also find pig feet, pig knuckles, and "Walk-y Talk-y"...can you guess what that is...packaged chicken heads and feet. Grilled chicken feet in particular are a favorite snack that can be readily found on a nice, hot braai stand (grill) at the Rustenburg taxi rank or any other street corner. On just about every other corner, you can find someone with a cage full of live chickens for sale. Personally, I don't want to know the intimate details of what I'm eating: it's mug shot, shoe size, last meal, etc., but hey, that's the reality of eating meat, right? I just prefer the packaged meat...a generic leg, thigh, breast, rump, etc...no face, no name, just...meat.

Well, today, on the way to Tapologo (a really cool and innovative hospice for terminal HIV positive individuals) to drop the SOS mothers off for their practicals, we dropped another mother off at a hatchery about 15 minutes away so that she could get some eggs. On the way back from Tapologo, we stopped to pick the mother up at the hatchery. Instead of the three passengers I was expecting to ride with, there was a surprise 4th passenger, a live chicken looking mighty resigned to the path his life was inevitably headed towards. I immediately became tense and was ready to get back to the Village so that I would not have to serve as the Grim Reaper's usher for longer than I had to! To add insult to injury, to mock the dignity of the soon-to-be dead, this poor, poor chicken, with his wings stretched back farther than I think they're supposed to go, the last thing he was ever going to listen to in his short chicken life was "This is how we do it" by Montell Jordan...Poor Chicken!