Thanksgiving-Cameroon style

Warning: Graphic food preparations to follow:

So, last week I talked about food that I’ve been eating here in Central Cameroon, native food, food cooked by Cameroonians. This past week, we turned the tables on the Cameroonians and cooked our own Thanksgiving feast within the confines of limitations of various availabilities.

I’m sure your first question is: did you eat turkey? Unfortunately no, there are turkeys here, but they’re expensive and it’s hard to find people who have them who are willing to sell. Instead, we kept with the poultry tradition and went with chicken. This also, surprisingly, was hard to accomplish. Our chicken finders searched Bokito high and low and came back empty handed. Apparently, the chickens wouldn’t be ready in time for our Thanksgiving feast on Saturday. They needed an extra 5 days. Apparently chickens here are only ok after they’ve hit 45 days. I’m not sure what the number of days is in America, but it’s certainly less than that. We had ourselves, a bonified, hormone free, free-range chicken! The downside of this healthy chicken, was it was tougher and stringier than American chicken, and also, once we opened it stomach contents, filled with pieces of plastic and what might have been cigarette butts it had eaten during it’s free ranging…. I’ll let you guys contemplate the merits of this “free range” style.

Anyways, so Friday, our chicken finders managed to procure three chickens from a farm in Bafia. We tied them up, stuck them under a bench in the car (where they proceeded to crap their brains out) and drove them home, listening to oldies and singing along the whole way. Saturday was execution day. After our morning classes, three of the trainees (the same people who were our chicken finders) went out back to begin the chicken preparing process with some of our language instructors and the old man who lives behind the center.

Warning: Graphic parts start here!

Step 1: Hold them upside down. Apparently a blood rush to the head makes the killing less painful and calms them down.

Step 2: Cut off the head. Using a stick with a notch cut into it for our chopping block, the heads were sawed off quickly with a blunt machete. The headless animal was held upside down as the blood drained and the body continued to move. They weren’t kidding about “chickens running around with their heads cut off”. For minutes after the head was removed, the legs and wings kept on going, as if to get away from its fate.

Step 3: Submerge in boiling water. This makes the plucking process easier. Unsurprisingly, Cameroonians never let anything go to waste and the chicken heads were prepared along with the rest of the body.

Step 4: Pluck. This is pretty satisfying for someone who likes to pluck people’s eyebrows. But it takes a really long time. There are so many feathers! We even defeathered the head.

Step 5: A quick grill: Cameroonians, after they pluck, put the chicken over an open fire quickly to allow us to better get at the feathers that didn’t come out easily and to clean it more easily. This was followed closely by more defeathering.

Step 6: Clean the chickens. This is a very large, in depth process. First, the feet are separated. The feet are then skinned and prepared for eating. Then, the chicken is cut, breast to anus. The innards are removed very carefully (if you break the gallbladder, the chicken isn’t good anymore). You have to make sure you get the anus and all of the organs attached to the inside of the body cavity, except for the heart. This requires tugging, cutting, and careful prying. After all these things are removed, you start going through the innards. You remove the gall bladder and throw that out, but pretty much everything else is fair game. The stomach is cut open, the contents and lining removed. Interestingly enough, this is “a part for men only. Women are not allowed to eat the stomach.” We, of course, graciously complied; especially considering the plastic bits we removed from the stomach of one of the chickens. The intestines are then split and cleaned and everything is thrown into the pot to get prepared.

Step 7: Clean the head. Don’t forget about the head! The beak is lovingly chopped up and the neck opened so the esophagus can be removed. This was also thrown in to be cooked

End of Graphic Part

That was the end of our chicken adventure as it was stuffed with tomatoes and onions and shoved into the oven to roast. They turned out amazingly, by the way.

The rest of our feast was also pretty stellar. The rest of the trainees from Bafia came to our Bokito training center to enjoy the day. It was a gorgeous, warm, sunny days and there was so much food! People made hummus out of red beans, fried rice, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with caramelized peanuts on top, green beans (that was my addition), French fries, guacamole, and tons of other delicious dishes.

For desert, Sam’s mom had sent her some pumpkin pie materials so we feasted. Everyone got a bit of amazing pumpkin pie, chocolate cake, pineapple cobbler, fruit salads, and marble cakes.

Everything was so delicious. We stuffed our faces. I didn’t stop feeling full till the next day. Literally, walking was like churning butter in my stomach. But it was just so good, I couldn’t get myself to put the fork down.

So, needless to say, Thanksgiving was a success. We made substitutions (bush mango instead of apples in our stuffing, garlic bread without butter, ect.) and everything turned out delicious. I was so happy.

As stage is coming to an end (one week left) celebrations like these are becoming more and more important and exciting. We are using this time to build up the relationships that are going to get us through the next two years. It’s just as important, if not more so, than all the time spent learning about Cameroon, it’s languages and its people. And I am making great friends. People I will be able to count on in a bind, I’m happy to report. J

As swearing in nears- I’m getting excited to go and dreading leaving. I’ll be so sad to leave these amazing people. However, we will have IST (in service training) three months into our service, when we should be finishing up with our community assessments and getting ready to buckle down and begin projects. So our time together isn’t over, just spread out for now.

Speaking of swearing in: we have apparently been awarded a great honor this year. Our Cameroonian swearing is going to be featured online… somewhere. Apparently it will be taped, broadcasted, and lots of photos taken for the Peace Corps website. I think it has something to do with the 50^th Anniversary of PC Cameroon, but I’m not sure. I’m also not sure where this video or these photos will be available online. I have heard rumors of the PC website, or CNN, or some other random website. Unfortunately, my internet time and speed is extremely limited at the moment and I haven’t been able to find out where this will be. I encourage you, if your interested, to spend a few minutes on google. If you do find the website, please comment on this blog post so other people can benefit from your awesome googling.

Personal update: I got my first package this week and am feeling loved and in touch with my family back home (thanks for the calls guys!). Although, missing everyone immensely. Cravings of the week: Sour cream and onion Pringles, Gatorade, gold fish, and dark chocolate peanut M&M’s.