Here Chicken Chicken

Over the past couple of days we've spent most of our time in chicken houses. We're involved in a poultry raising project and we had to get chickens ready for market. I thought I might become strictly vegetarian but so far so good. We started the first day with an order of 100 chickens but very quickly it got dropped to 30 because the chickens weren't making weight.

If you read the previous post then you know our living situation. There's no running water so we have to fetch it from a 65' well and haul it back to the village or travel a long distance over uneven terrain losing a quarter of the water on the way back. The toilet is a pit latrine with maggots crawling on the feces about 7' down and flies circling the pit opening. The door is half of a 70kg chicken feed bag. Meals are cooked outside or inside over wood burned coals and the fire temperature is raised using a plastic plate to fan the coals and flame. Our light source at night is a small parafin lamp and a flashlight. When the moon is in the sky it gives us enough light to make it from our mud hut to the latrine without the flash light. It really puts a lot of things in perspective for us. In one of the mud huts lives several orphans that live in the compound doing most of the daily work.

We are invloved in several projects but right now the chickens are a top priority. They are ready for market at 41 days but our chickens are about 7 weeks old which means the community is losing money. 400 chickens eat and drink a lot daily so they need to be sold quickly. It takes a lot of work to dress them for the market too. Going to the grocery store in the U.S. I was never aware of the process but now with first hand experience a chicken will never look the same to me again. Mateo and I have been responsible for weighing the live chickens and sending the good ones to slaughter. The slaughtering is done behind the mud hut where all of our cooking is done. Interestingly, the person slaughtering does it in a humane way which we later found out he learned from a Muslim.

The chickens are plucked, cleaned out, washed off and put in individual bags. Then all are put in a feed sack to go to the hotel that has placed the order. The workers are paid with the gizzards. Everyone working comes from the community and the money made will funnel back into community projects. It's all really grassroots. No high tech tools or machinery just knives sharpened on rocks, a few buckets, a wood fire and some plastic chairs. Everyone sits out in the grass under a tree getting the work done.

In addition to the chickens there's also trench digging to lay water pipes. Although women's rights are extremely lacking in Kenya the women in this part of the country are the major bread winners in the house however it's not by choice. The women spend so much time fetching water it takes time away from their economic endeavors. The pipes should help reduce time so people don't have to go so far for water. The women are also making homemade cinder blocks to build 10 composting latrines in the community. The waste will be used for manure after a drying process some years down the road. Every project that will benefit the community is done by the community. Old and young people are out there putting in a lot of hard work. We're trying to lend a hand wherever we're needed meaning sometimes were doing multiple jobs at once. It is so cool though.

As for our dealings with the chickens. We've slaughtered 132 so far. We have another order to finish filling on Wednesday and when everything is done the focus will be on the layers, the chickens who will make lots of money for the community with 400 eggs per day.