Death of a Chicken

Today I went with Mea to get a chicken to cook for dinner. The chicken market turned out to be a small, unlit, stinky room off the street that opened into a chicken coop in the back.

The chicken killers who ran the place took great pleasure in demonstrating their trade to the goofy foreign guy. I figured at the very least it would be an eye-opening experience for a guy who never saw his dinner leave the mortal plane before.

This would be a good place to stop reading if you're squeamish.

The spectacle begins when they enter the chicken holding cell and grab a desirable specimen. After showing it to you they weigh the bird and get your nod of approval.

Then, as the chicken begins clucking in what can only be described as distressed cries of fear and confusion, the chicken killer takes the bird over to a barrel, slits it's throat, and knocks it on the head with the back of the knife. The chicken starts bleeding from the neck immediately, and looks very confused. At this point, the bird becomes strangely silent. Then it's dropped into the barrel.

Inside the barrel the chicken thrashes violently for about 3 minutes. Once silent, the chicken killer flips the barrel over and dumps the chicken corpse into the dirt.

The now bloody, dirt covered chicken carcass is then lifted from the floor and dropped into a cauldron of hot water and stirred around with a big stick, like some sort of sanguinary chicken mud soup.

Remember the cartoons where Daffy Duck finds himself in a pot of hot water, ready to be cooked? Yeah, it's like that, only gross.

After being stirred for a few minutes, the chicken is dunked in a smaller pot of boiling water and tossed onto a table.

The chicken killer then quickly pulls the feathers away, leaving a wrinkly corpse, skin pocked with little bumps from where feathers used to be.

Then it's on the professional chicken gutter. This guy slits the throat once more, reaches in and pulls out what I can only imagine is the interior of the chicken's throat. He then flips the bird over, and makes an incision in it's lower belly.

I can't even begin to describe the vilness that poured out. Innards, guts, little floppy tuby looking things. He cuts them free, and carefully aims them away from the chicken and squeezes the bile out. Yellow fluid shoots across the table. Once the guts are tossed into the chicken entrail pile, the bird is dropped unceremoniously into a small plastic bag.

For dinner, Mea cooked it up in our oven. It was the most delicious chicken I'd ever tasted.

Las Salinas

Last weekend I went to a beach at Las Salinas with my coworkers. To get there, we took a guagua from Azua to Baní, got a free ride on another guagua to the bus station, and took another bus to Las Salinas. Total cost - 115 pesos.

In Las Salinas we followed the directions given to us by a friend to find a hidden beach, away from the crowded public beach. It took a while to get there, but it was well worth it. We had almost the entire beach to ourselves.

One Lucky Cow

Cow on El Mogote near Jarabacoa, DR

This is one of my favorite cow pictures.

I think it's because I envy that cow's cud-chewing, flatulent, mountain lifestyle.

In the Dominican Republic now

I arrived in the Dominican Republic on Sunday night. The first two nights were great - I stayed at El Embajador in Santo Domingo, a real classy place. Our intern eventually arrived, though sans luggage. Poor guy.

Yesterday we moved to Azua, our new home for the next month. The office is not bad - we're in a small room with all the computer equipment and a brisk air conditioner. We have frequent power failures - about one an hour.

The house where I'm living is pretty nice too. I am living there with my team, so to decide who got which room, we played several rounds of asshole, and it's British equivalent, shithead. I lost out, but my room is pretty decent. I have screens on my windows (supplemented with duct tape) and a ceiling fan.

The power is a real issue here. We have a battery backup system to keep the lights and ceiling fans going, but it failed last night. I tried opening up my windows to deal with the stifling hot humid still air. That didn't help much, and it introduced a cacaphony of motorcycles, barking dogs, roosters, and un-muffled buses and trucks.

I didn't sleep much.

This morning I rode a motoconcho to work. This involves hopping on the back of a dirtbike, possibly up to two passengers + driver, for a harrowing ride over speed bumps, highway traffic, gravel, and giant puddles to get to the office.

I'm not sure if I can get used to that. I may need a bicycle.