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Published: September 12th 2008
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Hello Dinner
Nice to meat you! Today is Ethiopian New Years Eve, it’s a beautiful clear warm sunny day. Like Easter you can hear the bleating of the sheep everywhere and the crow of the cockerels, the birds are singing, it really is a lovely day.
We have decided to celebrate New Years Eve as we would in the UK, so we’re holding a party for all our friends here in Assosa tonight. Many people travel home to be with their families and people will gather during the day tomorrow to eat and drink and celebrate, we have been invited to our Seurateunya (Worker) Marta’s house to spend sometime with her family so we’ll be looking forward to that - we will just have to make sure the hangover isn’t too bad from tonight.
For our celebrations and our friends we decided we would buy a chicken. Al and I are both vegetarian, so meat isn’t usually on the menu, however people are always very accommodating for us and our palate when we visit, so it only seems fair to do the same for our guests, Unfortunately Wednesday is a fasting day and it’s Ramadan, so the Orthodox Christians will not be eating any meat,
and the Muslims will be waiting till sundown. So not great timing, but none-the-less we wanted to invite people before they had family commitments, and a party is a party after all.
So the chicken…….
Ato Fufa the UN Volunteer working at the Bureau has chickens, and offered to sell us one of his, this works out well as we didn’t really want to buy a chicken at the Saturday market and keep it for 4 days, Al didn’t want to have to look it in the eyes before it got the chop, Plus they make loads of noise!! I have to admit I suspect after bonding with a chicken for 4 days, feeding it etc, I probably would have kept it.
So I trotted off this morning to Fufa’s house and he picked out a lovely looking hen for us. Yes I am a vegetarian, Al and I have different reasons for being vegetarian, some of my reason is related to how animals are cared for, handled and prepared, particularly in the developed world. The meat you buy in the supermarket is pumped full of hormones and water and presented in plastic packaging, it’s a million
miles away from any kind of natural existence. Here in Ethiopia it is very, very different, you see people walking home from the market with their sheep on a piece of string, like a dog, you see all the different animals strolling about the street, munching on the grass, it doesn’t get more organic and free range than this, for me this seems like a much more natural existence, and if you choose to eat meat, then this way to me seems much better. The reality of life here is that there is less food, it is expensive and not taken for granted of wasted, meat is popular and for those who can afford it an important part of the diet, for most it will not be eaten everyday, maybe not even every week or every month.
I decided that if I was going to serve meat then I needed to meet my chicken and also see it being killed, if I can’t do that then, well, sorry folks, there isn’t going to be any meat on the menu. I was also interested to see the process, not just test myself!
Steven kindly said she could be prepared
at his house and he lives next door to Fufa,
and Worku, Lesley’s guard offered to prepare it for us. So that worked out great, I picked her up from Fufa’s, she was a lovely looking hen, nice and clean and she obviously lived a very pleasant life at Fufa’s, they have a nice house, in fact, when I got back to Steven’s we tied a bit of rope around her leg so she couldn’t get away, but she managed to break free and actually tried getting back home.
So she spent a bit of time in the garden before she got the chop, I thanked her, OK, I admit I named her as well, she was called New Year.
Worku did an excellent job in killing her and preparing her, it was very fast, he just held her down on the ground and took her head of with a knife, not too stressful or gory, then he spent about 45 minute taking the feathers off and cutting up the meat and then cleaning the meat, I was incredibly impressed with how he did it all. He said it was a very nice young chicken. Worku’s not even
going to eat any tonight as he’s Orthodox, so I’m going to have to save him some for tomorrow!
So now the chicken is being cooked for the famous Ethiopian dish, Doro Wot, it’s supposed to be very tasty, the beers already chilling, my sister sent over a chocolate cake mix, for Al’s birthday in May which we haven’t used yet, so I am going to go round to a friend who has an oven and bake that later this afternoon, Al’s made a play list from his iPod for the evenings entertainment (lets hope there’s no Scooter!) Steven has a Jules Holland DVD - perfect for New Year celebrations, and Marta turned up with a mound of injera this morning, so we are prepared. I just hope we have enough food and drink for everyone now.
Back to the chicken……
So you must be wondering, am I going to eat the Doro Wot?
If I was ever going to eat meat again, I feel it should be meat I bought and that I watched being killed, but it’s been a long time, so we’ll just have to wait and see………
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