Mario Kart in Real Life!

Let me begin by explaining the title of this blog and warn you that parts may be difficult to read for the weak stomached. As I was strolling along the main road with one of my teammates the other day, I happened to slip on a banana peel and nearly fall. Thankfully, I have catlike reflexes (I wish) and caught myself before I could be embarrassed in front of my teammate and every other Kenyan within sight who was obviously looking in my direction since I am a muzungu (white person). Instead of asking why on earth a banana peel was lying in the middle of the dirt road, I gathered my bearings and cheered with pure delight at the fact that I had just legitimately slipped on a banana peel without seeing it beforehand! Now that my friends, is some good ol’ fashioned Mario Kart in real life. If you don’t understand the videogame reference, please go over to my house and play with my brother right now before you continue reading…

Now, allow me to recap a story from this week for you. On Thursday evening, I had the privilege of helping to prepare supper one evening for my team. The menu consisted of chicken and rice, sounds pretty simple huh? If your first guess was that I got to prepare the rice, well I have to inform you that you are wrong because a story about me cooking rice would not be very interesting, unless I was cooking it with my feet or something. If that had been the case, we would have been having brown rice instead of white rice, if you know what I’m saying.

Anywho, I was asked to prepare the chicken for supper. Now in America, we have these handy places called grocery stores that have every possible food option you could think of in stock at all times. However, in Africa, grocery stores look a bit different. The owners of the grocery store located closest to us are Indian, so they are Hindu and therefore do not eat meat or sell it in their store. Sooooo, a lot of Africans like their meat to be very fresh. Here is the African definition of “fresh” meat: a dead animal that was roaming about the city streets just ten minutes prior to being cooked.

Okay, back to my story. The wonderful, joyful man who has been cooking breakfast, lunch, and supper for my team for about a week now, brought out a cute, fluffy chicken that he was holding in one hand, dangling the chicken by its feet. In the other hand was a knife that was duller than it should have been for what was about to take place next. He took me behind the schoolhouse next to the church and made sure that everyone close by was watching. He handed me the supple chicken (that’s for Becca and Hannah 😉 and the murder weapon, I mean knife.

I was told to lay the chicken on the ground, stretch out its wings behind it, place my left foot on the wings, and place my right foot on the legs. Then, I was instructed to grab the chicken’s head in my left hand and pull it back as far as I could. All it took was a visual of a sawing motion to know what I had to do. I pulled the chicken’s neck back, praying that it would die quickly, stared into the desperate look in its eye, and with a deep breath, I began to saw the chicken’s head clean off.

You know how people say that chickens can run around with their heads cut off because they don’t die right away? Well, I hate to say it, but it’s completely true that they don’t die right away. I didn’t let it run around like a headless horseman, or I suppose a headless bird in this case, but it was obvious that it took at least 10 seconds for it to finally rest in peace. In that moment, I finally felt like I had achieved womanhood, similar to how adolescent boys in a certain African tribe have to kill a full-grown lion in order to become a man. They’re pretty much the same thing, right? If you do not quite believe every part of this story, I can show you the video when I get home. I would post it on Facebook for all to see, but I think it is a bit gruesome.

In all honesty, this has been an AMAZING week. God has given my team so much unity and purpose for being here. We are blessed by the people and children we interact with on a daily basis and are constantly reminded that we have victory because of the One who rose from the dead victorious! Thank you so much for your prayers because we can see that God is answering them.