Reality Checks

Yesterday was a seriously long day. Even though we rebelled and took the afternoon off. Lani, my roomate, and I put on our bikinis and sunbathed on the lawn until it got cloudy. In true lazy-day fashion, when Alex went into town, we had him bring us back two rotisserie chickens which we ate on the lawn. Then little kids and dogs climbed all over us and picked the chickens clean.

Then I went into my room and had some time feeling sensitive. It just occured to me how absolutely heartbreaking the world is sometimes, and everything just felt very painful, some things in my life and also the tradgedies of this generation, with natural disasters and the general anxiety young people have about the future. And I just let myself feel the suffering, like the books I have been reading have told me to do. And it felt very honest.

Just as I was drying my eyes, the Übermench calls out to me, Rachel, were you going to kill the chickens?
What chickens? Is today chicken day?
Yeah, hurry up.

So we go to the chicken coop. He points to one, and I run around like an idiot for about 3 minutes trying to catch it. And then I do. I pick him up, holding my hands over his wings, holding his body against my chest. We go over to the compost heap, because blood is full of nutrients. The chicken breathing perceptably against my body.

He hands me a kitchen knife.
So I just thwack down on the neck once and it´s all over, right?
No, Rachel, you have to saw it off. With strokes. Pull the feathers away so you don´t have to cut through them.

I am horrified. Sawing??? With a stupid kitchen knife? So much adrenaline.
You see, the reason I wanted to do this is because I am a meat-eater. I don´t want to be a vegetarian. But if I am going to be ok with eating meat, I want to be ok with what it means. It means that something alive, the way I am alive, is going to die. So that I can eat it. And if that process is too horrific for me, then I should not be supporting it. Because it´s so easy to be detached from the reality of meat when I walk into Stop & Shop and get a plastic-covered styrofome tray of chicken breasts.

Paul holds the chicken´s calm, really pretty trusting body. I pull the neck long, holding back feathers, the neck across a board. We shuffle around because I hold the knife in my left hand. I work out the contradiction that this chicken is definitely going to die, and that the kindest way to do it is to be aggressive with the knife, to cut hard and fast without hesitation.

And that is what I do. In two strokes it´s over, the severed head and the headless body both freaking out, the neck twitching in the compost, the wings flapping wildly in Paul´s hands. And then it´s still.

We let the blood drain and then carry it to the big kitchen where Lucia and Ruth show me how to clean it. We dip it in boiling water, and then pull all the feathers off, and the foot skin. Then we hold it over the burner so that any little hairs left on the skin burn off.

Then we slit below the neck and pull out the stomach, which is like one of those stress- ball things you can buy at museam giftshops with hard little balls inside. The balls being bits of undigested corn.

Then we cut it open a little above the tail end, and I stick my hands in and rip out all the guts. Careful not to break the dark green pouch the size of a horsepill, the spleen, with its bitter liquid. Iladio cuts open an organ people don´t have, shows me how the chicken decomposes the corn and grass inside this mother-of-pearl shelled box that lives in its belly.

Lucia asks me if I want to clean the ¨tripo¨, the large intestine, and I say no. Then she asks Paul. Now, Ecuadorians are huge jokesters. I am trying to learn. So I joke, no Paul doesn´t want to share the intestine cleaning job, he wants it all himself. And the ladies are laughing, and I´m thrilled. I made a successful joke!
Paul: Do you understand what they´re saying?
Me: Yeah, we´re laughing about how you want to clean shit out of chicken intestines.
Paul: No, Rachel, ¨tripo¨is another word for venereal disease.
Oh. There´s really nothing more humiliating than trying to fit in, especially in a new language, and no matter how hard you try, still being the laughing stock of the crowd. It´s really, really hard.

I excuse myself because I have to make pizza dough for dinner tonight. Everyone takes a job, cutting up and frying veggies, cleaning, picking things from the garden. Simon goes out to light a fire in the stove. And then from the window we see him get up and sprint across the yard to where the kids have lit a fire in a hole. They do this frequently, and unsupervised. Because in Ecuador safety is not a real consideration. Not the way it is in America. After living without a fridge for a month, for example, I eat unrefrigerated leftovers for breakfast. No problem.

Someone is on fire. Simon rips the kid´s burning pants off, brings him into the house, in the bathtub. Runs cold water on his body. Simon has completed 3 years of medical school. He has also just saved a child´s life. Alex and John go to get the parents. He needs to go to the hospital. Patches of his legs, and a huge swath of his back, are burned pink in relief to the brown skin of his body, layers upon layers of which have peeled away in the wounded parts. After the adrenaline wears off, he begins to scream. Where are his parents? I go to see what´s taking them so long. I find his mother in the kitchen. Alex told her, your kid is hurt, his pants were on fire. And she´s still cooking. I run in. He needs to go to the hospital! She looks confused. Hospital! Blank face. Why doesn´t she get it? Alex is better at Spanish than I am. Se quemo! I tell her. And then she gets it. She bolts with me to the volunteer house.

I cannot imagine discovering my child so hurt. She holds him, scolds him, asks God how this could happen. What a nightmare. I get them a glass of water. Someone has gone to get Stuart, whose friend Edwin happens to be visiting with his truck. Every time the kid shrieks I shudder. Alex asks me if I´m alright. I scream at him, No I´m not alright! And then burst into tears, apologize profusely for shouting at him. He´ll be alright, he´s just going to be in the hospital for a little while, he´ll be fine, everyone tells me. I´m not crying because I think he´s going to die, I´m crying because he and his mother are suffering and I can feel it and hear it.

They carry him to the hospital. He´ll be there for 3 weeks. At Ecuadorian hospitals, you have to pre-pay for all medication before it is given. There are not blankets or beds for family to stay in. He is taken from Cayambe to Quito, an hour and a half away. We all hope that at least this will encourage parents to take care of their children better. To watch them. Stuart bans fires made by children on the farm. (The children were playing with fire and a can of gasoline when the accident happened). Stuart has been chided by parents for disciplining their children, telling them not to do things. It´s culturally not done- you do not have authority over other people´s children. Everyone is shaken and grave. But he´ll be fine. He´s lucky.

Today we went to Otavalo, the biggest indigenous market in Ecuador. I got some jewelry and a scarf because I miss having pretty things here. In a few minutes I´m going back for the Ubermench´s going away party. We might go clubbing tonight. In a day or two I´m leaving for a mud bath in some hotsprings, and then to the rainforest for 5 days. Yesterday was really intense, but unlike usually, I haven´t really pondered it and turned it into some parable that signifies a life lesson. Maybe I´m not ready yet. Or maybe I´m becoming no-nonsense, not mulling over things. That´s the way people are here. I think it will stay with me, though. Really I think it will.