1/3/05


My host father, Marc, wants me to beat his children– the six-year-old, four-year-old, and the two-year-old. I'm trying to imagine a similar scenario in the States: children are bothering you, you talk to the parents, and they say, "any time they misbehave like that, just take a stick and beat them." You'd probably be arrested for child abuse. Here though, it's the norm. Adults as a whole are responsible for raising children, including their discipline. Maybe Hillary was right- perhaps it does take a village, at least in Chad.

The wheel of cultural differences seems to come up with something new for me every day, and extends to every aspect of life, whether it's being asked to beat the neighbor's children, or other more subtle things, like food. Since I've arrived in Gounou-Gaya I've eaten almost exclusively vegetarian meals, mainly because of the appalling lack of sanitation at the meat market. Last night I was preparing a meal of rice, hot peppers, onion, garlic, eggplant and tomato over my ganoum, the charcoal wire basket that functions as a stove when my neighbor Ertchey arrived. After a few minutes of small talk, an absolute cultural must, Ertchey asked me if he could use my charcoal, which was still glowing, to prepare dinner for himself. In and of itself this was a bit strange, as cooking is seen as exclusively 'women's work,' but his stepmother was off visiting a friend, and he was getting hungry. I was close to finishing, and the coals would last for another few hours at least, so I told him to go ahead.

"What are you cooking?" I asked him.

"Un petit poulet," he replied, a small chicken.

A minute later as I was cleaning up the dishes and tossing the food scraps into the communal trash pit I saw Ertchey walk by with a knife in one hand and a live chicken in the other. He disappeared into the field across from my house, which serves as communal toilet, auxiliary trash pit, and apparently, chicken slaughtering grounds. I began eating, mixing the rice and sautéed pepper/onion mixture as carefully as possible; I didn't want to spill any.
I heard footsteps and in walked Ertchey, holding a freshly-killed bird in his hand. Blood was still dripping from the gash in its neck, and its glassy eye seemed to be staring right at me as I chewed on the eggplant. He pulled up a brick, sat down next to the ganoum, and began picking the feathers off the unfortunate chicken. When he was finished he took the knife, sawed off the head and feet, and in a swift and obviously practiced motion split the bird down the middle and twisted, removing the intestines and internal organs. I sat watching all this was a mixture of fascination and nausea. Of course chickens are killed by the thousands every day in America and Europe, but we never see it- we simply go to Safeway or Trader Joe's and pick up the pre-cut, pre-wrapped, refrigerated pieces of flesh. On a rational level I know that they have to be butchered, but it's enough to make me think long and hard about eating meat, at least in Chad.

Ertchey quickly removed the heard and sliced it open, picking out a residue that I can only assume was dried blood. He then put the heart meat, as well as the rest of the chicken directly onto the still-glowing coals, which began to sizzle. I can only imagine how this might've looked to an outside observer; me, sitting on a pink plastic deck chair eating rice and vegetables out of a pot, Ertchey perched on a brick, bloody knife lying in the sand by his side, while pieces of chicken sizzled on the pile of charcoal. A few minutes later it was finished cooking, and Ertchey picked the chicken out of the fire bare-handed, its legs and neck partially charred.

When Chadians eat meat (or virtually anything else, for that matter) nothing goes to waster. Muscle, cartilage, fat, veins, even small pieces of bone usually are eaten. Ertchey was no exception- he ripped the chicken apart, crunching and chewing anything remotely edible. I sat there enjoying my rice, trying hard not to watch.

But there are other bizarre differences here, random things beyond food that leave me scratching my head, wondering if I'm still on the same planet. Chadians (and much of Francophone Africa at large) are obsessed with protocol and formality, but yet things seem perpetually disorganized. Case in point- I was supposed to begin teaching this morning, with my first class starting at 7:15. I arrived at school about 6:55, so I could talk with the Proviseur (Principal) for a few minutes, find my classroom, and get acquainted with the grounds. As I walked in the gate, 20 minutes before classes were scheduled to begin I didn't see a single human being; Proviseur, professors, students- not a one. This is a place where I can't complete a purchase for 60¢ worth of nails without the proprietor giving me a handwritten rubber-stamped receipt, but yet on the first day of school nobody bothers to show up? These little contradictions are part of what makes life in Chad as interesting as it is, I suppose.

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