Which Came First? The Chicken or the Egg?

Ok in this case the chicken definitely came first. One of my biggest frustrations of homestay was the state of cleanliness (or absolute lack thereof) of my living conditions. I learned to eat 3-day-old chicken (there are no refrigerators here) and scoop from a sugar bowl with more ants than sugar (gotta get that protein somehow) but I could never get over how my filthy my room was every morning despite my best efforts to clean. I like to refer to my mosquito net more as a ‘critter net’ because at night it protected me from the giant spiders, bats, rats, and other creepy crawly critters one would only find in a mud house in Africa. My net was treated with some strong chemical and it’d bring me satisfaction in the morning to look at the floor and see all the dead cockroaches and spiders that met their fate trying to crawl in bed with me the night before. Or to sweep all the rat/bat/mystery animal poop off the top of my net that would have otherwise been on my face. On top of this, my mud/cement stucco-ed walls would just crumble every time wind blew red dirt through my windows. Seriously, I went to Njombe (Southern Highlands) for a week to shadow another Peace Corps Volunteer as part of training, and when I returned it looked like WWIII had happened in my locked room while I was away with the amount of cement blocks, dead insects, dust, and feces that piled my floor.

Anyways, this post is not intended for you to feel sorry for me because yes, I signed up for this fully knowing what I was getting into but I wanted to share with you my breaking point with this mess. So one day I came home from school and noticed my room was in a particularly disastrous state. I looked closer and noticed that my sleeping bag, which is usually folded at the end of my bed, was twisted in a spiral. I went closer and noticed red chicken footprints all over my sheets. Sure enough, a chicken had flown over my walls (there was no ceiling) into my room and proceeded to lay 2 eggs in my sleeping bag!! Yeah, I was sleeping in the Muslim equivalent of a pigsty! The worst part was that when I showed my family, they got excited and thought it was the best thing ever. Every afternoon that week I’d come home to a nest of blankets and more eggs. Rock Bottom. Well that Sunday, my uncle came into town from Tanga (the ‘big city’). We were all sitting around at home that day and he watched the chicken try to fly up into my room. He quickly stood on a bucket, grabbed the chicken mid-act and immediately snapped its neck. We ate it for dinner that night and it tasted like sweet victory!