Monday, August 30, 2010

Where Does Meat Come From




I was wondering what this entry would be about all week, but Saturday the topic become as obvious as…something quite obvious.

Don Oscar has papers to live in the United States; he came back to home to my site once last year when his mother died and came back in July this year for the one year anniversary of his mothers death-which is something of a celebration here.

Since he has been back he has told me several times that he would be killing a cow and wanted me to be there to eat it, and I wanted to be there for the whole things; Part of my reason for going was just to get a little closer to the food chain. Last week he told me that ‘this Saturday without doubt we will be killing it.” I was skeptical, but when the day came around…the cow was killed.

I think it’s safe to say I have changed a lot since I have been here. The first time I saw a chicken killed it made me think. When I saw a rabbit get dressed I felt a little wheezy so I was dubious about what my reaction would be to seeing a cow that weighs several hundred pounds getting killed would be.

There are a few people in the town that always do the killing and dressing of animals. ‘Napo’ tied up the cow in front of an audience of mostly kids less than 10. Once on the ground he sharpened his knife said ‘forgive me lord’ then made a hole in its neck and let it bleed to death. The last minute of the cow’s life was the hardest to watch, it mooed very loudly and with anthropomorphizing it too much it seemed scared. When it mooed loudly (sounded more like a scream then a moo) blood flowed more rapidly from the hole in its neck. I’m sure there are more humane was of killing a cow now. Its eyes seemed to change color and it died. Then two grown men, a teenager and myself started to peel the leather off the meat. That was really the only thing I could help with. I was expecting to be much more disgusted than I was. The skin is very tough and we sharpened our knives every few minutes. After it was flayed they worked for about 2 hours getting all the meat off and left the guts and skin for the vultures and dogs.

I was excited to eat grass feed beef, but they cooked it so much I couldn’t taste much more than a normal steak. So did I think about becoming a vegetarian while we were cutting it? For a few seconds I did but it just didn’t seem like a big deal killing it. Maybe it was the presence of kids the whole time who watched with interest at times boredom at others, but I never really felt anything more than a mild sense of gratitude for the meat the cow had given us. Or maybe I’m just a hardened killer now.


Friday, August 13, 2010

Return

It has been a while I know.

There is a host of reasons why I have not written any new updates in a longtime. I apologize.

What I have been up to.

The main thing I have been working on is a chicken project. A Salvadorian NGO came to my town last November to give a 3 week workshop on how to raise chickens. It was 3 hours a day for three weeks. I attended the whole thing; we learned about better chicken nutrition, vaccinations, and shelter. At the end of the workshop though nothing was given to the 25 participants (all women, mostly all mothers) apart from a diploma. So I started raising chickens on my own (in hopes to better understand the process and share with the community) 30 Hy-Line Browns a breed that has been bred to lay an alarming amount of eggs (1 a day for 14 months) while at somewhat contradictory to the rules of nature bred to not have any nesting instinct (which is counter productive for maxim production of eggs because chickens will sit on egg (whether or not they are there) instead of eating). I applied for a grant from an NGO in the states called Mothers to Mothers. I won the full amount of the grant, so every participant will receive the basic materials to build a chicken coop, vaccinate their chickens, and properly ailment them until they start laying eggs. However I will be using a different breed of chickens that are duel purpose (eggs and meat).

Raising chickens is a funny experience. It takes not more than 20 minutes a day to take care of them and each chicken can produce about a dollar of profit a month (not bad when the national income average is 4-5 dollars a day). My favorite part has been a fence I made. I cut down branches of a tree that is particularly nutritious for chickens and planted them a few inches apart for a coral in theory they start growing and put out new branches and leaves which can be cut and thrown into the chicken pen. Of all the branches about 50-60% have started growing.

Recently I have also started (and almost finished) a world map mural at the school. It’s a pretty typical Peace Corps project. I was inspired to do it after I had a group of teenagers over to my house to watch Saving Private Ryan and I asked them if they could find any of the countries named in the movie-they could not even find El Salvador save one kid. So now at the school is an almost complete 6ftx12ft map of the world.

I can’t stand teaching English. Something about it gets my goat. But people kept asking me for them so I started my Trojan Horse English Club. I teach 20 minutes of English then 20 minutes of whatever I feel like (health lectures, or last week I just played Beethoven’s 5th symphony for 20 minutes ( I was surprised how much they liked it)). Then 20 more minutes of English.

Sorry for my lapse I will try to keep up to date from now on. Two a month will be my goal. Hold me to it.

-Matt