A Namibian Meal

Since I arrived in Windhoek about 7 weeks ago, my food consumption has mostly hewed to a pattern that is comforting to my Western palette. I have eaten steak, lamb, soup, pasta, chicken, and rice (all store-bought) when I have cooked for myself, and when I eaten out I have never ventured further than the occasional zebra or ostrich. Otherwise my meals have largely consisted of fried chicken, burgers, pizza, and so forth. There is, of course, nothing unusual in any of this, except for the biographical fact that from 2002 to late 2007, I was a strict vegetarian, on moral grounds. I believed it was utterly wrong to kill an animal for any reason. I watched the PETA film Meet Your Meat; I knew what was done to animals in the factories and slaughterhouses back home. Even still, I would not have consented to eating so-called “organic” or “free-range” meat, either. I believed animals were entitled to a certain measure of respect that included never deliberately taking their life.

I was wrong, for many reasons. First, I now understand that the world is fundamentally a cruel place where animals, including humans, kill other animals and eat them. Second, vegetarianism is itself mostly, though not entirely, a bourgeois concept, a moral luxury given to those who can afford the added expense of avoiding meat-based products in a world where energy comes from the devouring of flesh. Third, meat simply tastes good, and attempts to deny this basic human fact will always result in total failure. Having been an ardent vegetarianism for five years, I am, of course, well versed in the moral arguments for abstaining from meat. I’ve read the literature, the famous environmentalist polemics against meat-eating. They no longer sway me in any way.

But as of today I have really come full circle. Because today, for the first time in my life, I killed two animals by my own hand. I could have avoided this task. Invited to a “traditional” Namibian meal in Katutura, my host, Rachel, asked me if I wanted to kill the two live chickens she had bought from the local market. I could have easily said no. I instantly said yes. As the moment approached, and Rachel set up a brick against which I would press the panga to the chicken’s exposed neck, I became excited, nervous. Would my conscience prevent me from completing the task? Would I faint at the sight of fresh blood? While Rachel prepared the boiling water, I anxiously looked in the cardboard box where the chickens were being kept. I wanted to look each of them in the eye. They looked a little dazed, but mostly frightened, and very vulnerable. I walked over to the side of the house and gripped the panga in my hands, running the blade against my palms. For some reaosn I thought of Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion, in which the panga had played a major role in the violence that rocked the country from 1952-1953. I remembered reading the story of a woman who saw her own child slaughtered by a panga in an attack on her village; how the killer had then licked the child’s blood off the blade. Was my fascination with killing these animals linked to a similar, almost pornographic, desire for blood?

Finally the moment came. Rachel grabbed the first chicken by the feet and neck. She placed the neck against the brick. The chicken said nothing. She seemed resigned to her fate. I thought I would be able to kill the chicken with a single blow to the neck from the panga, but the blade was too dull. Instead I had to saw the neck, with a slow, grinding, back-and-forth motion. The chicken made a mild protest as the blade first penetrated her neck, but then became silent. The head was severed in about one minute. Blood dripped down the bricks.

Now it was the second chicken’s turn. Rachel again grabbed the chicken by the feet and the head. This one seemed to have hopes for its own future, for it gave out a plaintive cry as it was placed against the brick. Rachel said, almost as if to soothe the creature, “I am sorry, but you are not mine.” At the time I did not know what this meant, but now I think she was saying that the chicken was not her child, not hers to protect. No one could protect the chicken now, except, I suppose, for the man holding the blade. I sawed its head off in about one minute. Both chickens’ bodies continued to jerk back and forth for another one or two minutes after their heads had been thrown in the pot (in Namibia, all the parts of the chicken are saved and eaten). This, of course, was not surprising.

What surprised me slightly was that I felt no emotional reaction whatsoever to what I had done, other than a vague but persistent sense of excitement. I think I would have sawed off chicken’s heads all day if given the opportunity. With the weapon in my hand, I felt more powerful, ushering these doomed creatures to their deaths. It is a commonplace saying that a man who feels more powerful because he has a weapon is really a coward. This is a lie, told to children so that they will not want to have weapons when they are older. I believed it for a long time, and I think, as a result, lived much of my life as a coward. I am not suggesting that the killing of two chickens has reversed my status in any way, but rather that the idea that the expression of masculinity through killing and violence is necessarily pathetic and stupid is clearly wrong.

As we watched the blood drain out of the second chicken’s neck, Rachel, who has killed many chickens, said, “This is not something to laugh about. This is not for laughing.” I am not sure why she said this, since no one was laughing or saying anything as we watched the blood drip down the bricks where the chickens had been slaughtered. The pipes outside the house were not running, but Rachel said the rains would wash away the blood soon enough. Later, we cooked the chickens over an open fire, called ediko in Oshikwanyama. Rachel cut open each chicken, emptying out its intestines, liver, and heart. The eggs each chicken was carrying inside its body also spilled out onto the pan where they were collected. The rest of the chicken was thrown back into the pot and cooked. Later that evening we ate the chickens, with rice, spinach, omalodu beer, oshifima, and Mopane worms, which are really caterpillars that have been dried and boiled in water. The caterpillars were spiced with chili; they were about the size of shrimp and very chewy. An American boy, also invited to the meal, kept inspecting the caterpillar on his plate, unsure about whether he should eat the blackened creature. He was very concerned about the features of the Mopane, the head versus the tail, the eyes, and so forth. He was clearly reluctant to eat the thing. I told him to just shove the entire thing in his mouth and start chewing. “Don’t think too much about it,” I said. He looked at me uneasily; he had seen me kill the two chickens earlier that day. He never ate the caterpillar.