090212, Thursday, after the free-range chicken

A baby awake

A baby not awake 

the chicken's last moment

homework

traditional way of making flour

Well, day three of the little school and it has been going fine so far.  I’m enjoying it and glad that I’m doing it.  There’s a lot I still need to learn about the psychology of children…

Yesterday afternoon one of the mamas’ daughter came to call me, because the mama wanted me to go and visit them at their house in the hills.  So I skipped my afternoon lessons and went off with her.  That is Gloria, the mama I sometimes give a lift home, she lives maybe 7kms outside Coffee Bay and normally walks back and forth.

I was glad for the opportunity to get into the rural side of things and take out my camera for a change…  There were a couple of kids playing around, the elder girls (still young though) looking after the babies.  All the babies crawling around with bare bottoms, there’s no money for nappies.  These people are quite poor, there are no men around who brings an income.  Everyone relies on the women.  And I know Gloria is old already, yet she still works,selling beads and picking up rubbish.  But she has been a bit ill, so hasn’t been going all the way to Coffee Bay lately to go to work.  They don’t have money for paraffin or much else.

Yet they are so generous.  When I arrived, there were two fat chickens walking around.  They told me that they were going to slaughter the one chicken in a little while (This family only speaks Xhosa, they really live in the ‘lallies’ (what they call the villages far away from the rest of civilization- from the Xhosa word elaleni). 

Anyway, they invited me to sit inside the rondavel for some tea.  They have one ‘bankie’ to sit on and everyone else sits on the floor on Xhosa mats.  So, we sat there drinking our tea, while one woman went out to slit the chicken’s throat.  I didn’t look at that procedure, only heard the flapping of the wings as the throat -less chicken ran it’s last little course around the yard. 

I found it amusing that, as this was taking place, there were two smaller chicks under the table inside the hut, standing dead still so only their legs would stick out under the table cloth.  I couldn’t help imagining their facial expressions at this stage, trying to hide and looking at each other – "uh.. do you think we're safe here?" ( that’s if chicks indeed had facial expressions…)

It wasn’t long before it was in the pot on the fire and about an hour later we had fresh chicken with ‘mnqusho’ (that would be samp and beans) for supper.  Really tasty.  And they even gave me another big peace of chicken to take home.