Diamonds and Chicken Slaughter

The last few weeks of PST were a whole lot of things at once. Emotions were all over the place, and it was kind of like leaving the US again. I was so excited to start on what I came here for and relieved to be finished with the everyday sessions, but I was also very nervous about getting to site and leaving friends, my host family, and our wonderful LCFs who are sympathetic to all of our cultural goofs. But more on that later, right now I want to write about chickens and diamonds.

 If the title isn’t warning enough, to all of my veggie friends- I helped slaughter a chicken. And it was a really interesting experience, so I’ll try not to be too gory but it was gory in ways I wasn’t expecting so if you’re squeamish skip ahead to the diamonds part. Otherwise, read on.

After hearing that several volunteers had helped their families with the chicken slaughter process, it became something I really wanted to do during PST. Now as a general rule, I don’t get much joy out of death, but I love me some chicken, beef, fish, and yeah, I’ve eaten goat. It’s good. That said, I feel like I have to come to terms with the reality of meat. Plus, the meat in Botswana doesn’t get any more free range; cows, goats and chickens frequently wander through the neighborhood.

Anyways, back to the chicken. A group of us went to a fellow trainee’s compound to watch and assist in the process. We chased the chicken around until it was tired out, finally catching it in the bushes. From there, I took the task of holding down the body while Nathan made the cut. *Warning, here is the gross part* Obviously, the phrase “chicken with its head cut off” comes from somewhere, but I can honestly say I was not expecting the body and head to twitch for that long. I figured it would tremble a bit and that would be that. Likely it felt longer than it was but there was about 20 seconds of movement, body and head both. And that wasn’t even the worst part. By far the most disturbing thing was feeling the heart stop beating. I could feel the final pumps of that chicken’s heart, the pressure decreasing and the frequency slowing. It didn’t even bleed that much but gahh I’m cringing as I write this.

Once that was over with, it shifted from an animal to food quickly. We boiled the chicken in a cauldron over a fire, and plucked away. It looked like something you could buy in a grocery store once the feathers were off. I didn’t get to stay to watch the cuts made, but hopefully I’ll get to see that another time over the next two years.

I’ve eaten chicken since then, and intend to continue eating meat. Even though it was a far from pleasant experience, I’m really glad I did it and if I get the chance, I’ll assist in preparing dinner again. Now, I’ll change the subject from the gross stuff to some diamond fun.

For a little background on Botswana, the reason it is a middle income country is because there are loads of diamonds and the government used the wealth responsibly, by building roads and schools and whatnot.  The diamonds are mined here, sorted and shipped off somewhere, and many come back here to be cut and/or polished. The details of the whole process have escaped me, but I have a newfound appreciation for diamonds after getting to see them in various stages. Plus, I got to hold some big ole rocks so that was pretty neat.

The trainees were able to go on two separate tours, to a polishing plant and where they sort the diamonds.  We were able to see plenty of diamonds in the rough getting sorted according to shape, size, clarity, color, etc etc; thousands of diamonds just lying around in piles waiting to be examined. They were sorted by hand and using machines, and with machines and human eyes together. We were able to look up close at diamonds polishing other diamonds, watch people decide how  to bets cut a 10 carat diamond, and see the combination of technology and human eyes deciding what to do with thousands of dollars in the palm of a hand. At the sorting, I found the dark diamonds that were to be used for machinery really interesting as I wouldn’t have been able to pick them out of any pile of rocks. At the polishing plant, we were able to see the raw rocks take the shape of what you would expect to see in a diamond ring. All in all, a very interesting field trip!