Turkey

Yet another journal entry from training.

Yesterday I killed a turkey. I decided that if i wanted to eat meat I needed to know what it felt like to kill. There was something about the 'out of site, out of mind idea' with meat that just didn’t seem right.

I was in French class at a fellow PCT's house. We had classes in an outdoor circular piot (not sure the exact spelling. A piot is a round structure, sometimes with a thatched roof, other times tin, that can be found in most Togolese yards.) During the middle of class i watched as my friends host mother walked past our class carrying a fairly large turkey by its feat, its multicolored head swinging back and forth. My friend said, "Oh no! She's going to kill it!" Not wanting to pass up an opportunity for a new experience, I jumped off the wooden benches we were sitting on, and to the surprise of my teacher, ran out of class. I ran over to the clearing in the shade under a mango tree where the condemned turkey sat trapped in the firm hands of this experienced Togolese killer and asked if i could do the dead. My friends host mother, draped in her beautifully patterned panya clothes, looked up at me, smiled and said, "Why not." The two girls in my class stood up in the piot, hugged each other, and watched with faces of terror while I was handed a small black handled knife. I was a bit taken aback. When i first thought of killing a turkey I had the image in my head of a chopping block, a well sharpened hatchet and a final swift stroke of death. I paused for a minute second-guessing what i was about to do. But something gave way and I allowed her to show me how to step on its feet and wings, hold its throat, and with a final back and forth motion, how to cut its neck. I took the very much alive animal in my hands, put my left foot onto its two large wings, my right foot onto its sharply clawed feet and took its head in my hand. I looked up one last time at the smiling gentle hearted grandmother in front of me. With a final nod from her my gaze fell to my victim. I put the knife to its throat and cut.

It was not the swift chop of death that I had hoped. Instead the well used knife took a couple back and forth strokes to break through the skin.

I finally knew that I had succeeded when the dark red of blood began to pour from its neck, staining the while bowl below and my formally clean hands. I finally gave charge over the freshly killed animal to the people who were going to do the hard job of plucking, cleaning, and cooking. My job was done.

I walked back to my two friends with a dazed look on my face and a weird feeling in my belly. One of the girls walked over and handed a tissue to me. At first i didn't realize why she had done that. I then looked down at my blood-spattered right hand and understood. I cleaned the warm blood from my hands and sat down in our outdoor classroom to continue the lesson.

ps. Tomorrow is my birthday!