Fresh Chicken

Well a while ago I got to have an amazing experience, one I have been wishing for since arriving in Rwanda. It started out at my friends host family, I really like them so I visit and so do many others. One this particular occasion there were 4 of us visiting. We like to cook them American food. Like grilled cheese and tomato soup, today though we decided on egg and cheese sandwiches. So we brought the ingredients to make them to their house as we usually do. The family never trusts our cooking so they always accompany our food with Rwandan food as well like beans, rice or pasta. So anyway on this particular day they really wanted to feed us chicken. This meant that we got to watch the entire process of making chicken sounds gross but it was really cool to watch. They had a ton of chickens running around their back yard so they grabbed one. Then flipped its wings so it could only sit on the floor is could not move anywhere. It was kinda sad really, we watched the chicken struggle to move many times until finally it accepted its fate and just sat still. The chickens feed were also tied up during this. Then, the chicken was picked up by its legs and with a knife the head was slowly cut off. It was not chopped of quickly maybe the knife was too dull for that or something. It was slow and blood poured out. Then the entire chicken was stick into a bucket of boiling water. And the feathers were plucked off. They even saved the head and plucked the feather off its head too. Then once the chicken was completely bare it was brought to the table to be cut open. The process reminded me of freshman year biology when we had to dissect things. They cut the chest open and we saw the liver, heart, intestines and stuff. They threw almost nothing away everything was put into a pot to cook. They cut the legs into 2 and the wings and the breast. Just like all the pieces of chicken we eat. It was put in the pot then a small amount of tomato paste was added and a lot of water. 2 hours later we ate chicken, the freshest I’ve ever had!