Food Lesson #4: When Chickens Get Sick

I am in the kitchen washing morning dishes. I like the way they divide work here, by the way, but more on that later. I haven’t put my contacts in yet but I can see something is going down in the kale garden. I squint for a better look.

It’s Margaret. She’s got a chicken in her hand. She bends over and holds the hen against the ground. Uh oh… I think I know what that means.

But wait! My eyesight is blurry so I can’t tell if her lips are moving, but it looks like Margaret is trying to calm the chicken down. She’s petting it with long, slow strokes. How nice… some of the chickens were sick yesterday – she must be giving this one some kind of calming-down cure, or maybe trying to feed it some medicine.

She pets the hen for what feels like a long time. My dish water is getting cold but even I am lulled into a tranquil state of mind. I could watch Margaret pet that chicken all day. Then somehow, seemingly without breaking her rhythm, a long daggar appears in her hand. The tip pushes into the hen’s neck on the downstroke and stays there a good long while, pressing deeper in with each downstroke of the rhythm, even though there is no more petting going on.

I go back to washing dishes. Later, Margaret tells me about sick chickens.

What To Do When the Chickens Get Sick

* separate the sick ones from their roost-mates that don’t look sick

* quarantine the sick ones in a separate pen

* give them as much food, water and medicine as they’ll eat

* give their roost-mates a day or two to make sure they aren’t also sick

* if the roost-mates don’t show symptoms in a day or two, eat them for dinner

* if the sick ones die of natural causes, don’t feed them to anyone, not even the dog

Some of the sukuma plants... the ones lined up in neat rows
& on the other side of the hedge is the chicken coop

It’s Praxides’s turn to cook dinner tonight. I whip up a batch of cookie dough to take advantage of the fact that she’s already got the oven hot. I’ve only been here less than a week but I’ve already figured out that the Sisters love it when people make cookies for them. I’m rolling little tea cookie dough balls in crushed almonds that I brought from home. Praxides opens the oven to check on whatever she’s got in there. “That smells really good,” I say, “what is it?”

Well I don't need to tell you what her answer is, do I?

Kenyan chickens are lean and tasty. Which reminds me, it’s time to go out and pick the sukuma leaves for the survivors’ breakfast tomorrow.