Chickens

The sounds of birds are everywhere in the villages where we are staying. But they’re not songbirds, they’re chickens – baby chicks cheeping on parade, roosters competing to win crowing contests, mother hens tutting to each other. (As an aside, I’m not sure I’ve seen a single songbird, but I have sighted an extraordinarily large hawk-like bird that purportedly eats – yes – chickens!).

Other than the dried fish I abhor, chicken, including chicken eggs, is the primary animal source of protein for people in the villages. Chickens outnumber goats and cows exponentially, probably because they take up less space and are fairly self-sufficient. They are still pretty pricey – about $2.50/chicken in most villages, which is a handsome sum for most people here. Many people can afford to eat chicken only once or twice a month. Chickens come in two varieties: kuku wa kienyeji (local chickens), preferred by most Tanzanians over the hormone-plumped kuku wa kizungu (foreign chickens) shipped in from commercial farms in Tanzania, for while kuku wa kienyeji in the villages are smaller and chewier, they have better flavor. Chickens are everywhere: you hear them rustling around in gardens, in the bush, pecking the dirt for insects and spare kernels of corn. Their sounds interrupt a good 80% of our interview tapes! It still seems dubious to me that people can know whose chickens are whose in a world without fences and nonstop egg-hatching, but people say they are like cats and never wander too far from their coop.

That is not to say that the chickens mind their own business. Chickens, especially hungry chickens, may well be the most meddlesome household animals I have ever seen. They invade houses uninvited if the door is left open, hopping up on tables and chairs. They gather close when you are washing dishes outside, hoping food scraps might be tossed their way (leave a pile of dirty dishes unattended for a minute and they will hop right on top, pecking the pile clean). One day I was cooking corn on the cob and left it covered and boiling on the charcoal stove outside for a few minutes – when I came back the lid had been pushed off and one cob rolled off the pile onto the ground. The culprit clucked with pride as he pecked at the corn. In addition to corn, they seem to eat almost anything, and have a particular penchant for coconut, cleaning the remnants of white flesh from the insides of discarded coconut shells. I watched a baby chick rolling around inside half a coconut shell, determined to get every morsel of coconut.

Chickens are also completely oblivious to their own mortality, becoming willing carnivores whenever chicken bones and parts are tossed out after dinner. When I first arrived in Dar, I saw a street vendor selling chipsi (French fries) and kuku (chicken) fried in oil. The precooked food was kept in a glass case on a table, under which pecked about 8 living chickens, wandering free. I thought in that moment how many Americans would be revolted, as we tend to feel discomfort associating the meat with the animal, inevitable in such close proximity, but I also thought it was bizarre that a chicken couldn’t sense certain—albeit eventual—death. In one of the villages, I watched one of the people we were staying with slaughter a rooster. It was a much less traumatizing event than I expected (having not grown up on a farm), because it was soundless. The rooster’s only angry squawks came when a young man selected him from the flock and picked him up. This man sat with the bird for a good 20 minutes, wearing a felt fedora at a jaunty angle and somehow managing to look oddly cool with this gigantic rooster on his lap, stroking the bird’s feathers like a pet. (I had no idea at this point that he would be dinner, I thought he was a pet – then I noticed another man sharpening a knife). This man then took the rooster, held him upside down, lay him quietly down on the ground, gently immobilized the rooster’s head and legs with his two feet, and cut off the rooster’s head with one clean, noiseless stroke. He stood there with the bird for a couple of minutes until it stopped moving – this rooster would have run around with its head cut off if given the chance. For all the noise and protests roosters can generate, the silence was palpable. A mother hen and her 8 chicks walked within a couple of feet of the slaughter, sensing no fear and expressing no curiosity. The men laughed when I asked if they noticed the rooster, and they answered, “Kuku hana kumbukumbu” (a chicken has no memory). I can at least affirm that chickens are not too bright!

The rooster was delicious, by the way – organic and free-range, and fresh from farm to table!