Thanksgiving

Around 6 PM on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I sat on the front porch of the project house, reading. Zack, Amber, Consolate, and Gabby pulled up in the Land Cruiser. They had just been to Kigali to drop Dr. Cairo off at the airport.

Emi, the house dog, was VERY excited as they pulled up, because she could smell the turkeys. The team had picked up the turkeys from a farm just outside the capital. To transport the birds home, the farmer had stuffed the turkeys into white plastic trash bags. Now the turkeys sat in the back of the Land Cruiser, falling over themselves as they tried to get out of the bags.

We found that the birds could live comfortably in the gatehouse, which Muzehe (literally “old man”, our gatekeeper) never uses – he prefers to hang out in his room in the house. For a couple days we fed the turkeys corn and millet and Emi tried to find a way to break into the gatehouse.

On Tuesday night we decided it was time. Zack, Rene, and I myself took turns through three positions: holding down the bird, sarcastically commenting on the struggles of the butcher, and removing the head from the turkey. I was first up at severing the head.

Everything I’ve seen about killing poultry has indicated that one strong, quick blow across the neck will remove the head. Rene held the turkey down, and I raised the knife.

We did not have many options for which knife to use. Most of our cutlery is oriented towards chopping vegetables. We don’t boast a full-scale kosher kitchen. So, after reviewing out limited choices, we settled on the chopping knife. The chopping knife has the big flat blade and a good amount of weight. It is particularly useful for scooping chopped vegetables into stir frys.

I brought the blade down, finding that same blank state of mind that I’ve used in the past on the rugby field. It’s comfortable in its certainty. The mental state is sustainable only just before impact. It relies on the conviction that ‘I will break through and cannot be stopped’ to power complete effort of force.

Almost as soon as the knife hit the turkey’s neck, I was shocked to discover it bouncing back up. There had been no effect. I tried again.

“No! No! No!” yelled Rene, “you must saw it off!”

The chopping knife was not serrated and therefore miserably suited for such a job. I pressed the knife down, sawing back and forth.

After a few seconds, with no obvious progress I looked up, “We need a different knife!” I yelled desperately at Zack, who began to laugh. The whole point of the quick chop is that it is humane – the suffering is minimized. But here I was, standing over an animal that I intended to kill, it knew I intended to kill it, and I was doing a very bad job of it.

I crouched down again and continued to saw. Now I cut into the neck, drawing blood. It bubbled up from the wound, warm and sticky, coating my hands.

My goal was still to minimize suffering. The actual spine was proving difficult to cut through, so I focused on severing the windpipe and main arteries – removing whatever connections I could from head and body. I saw the outlines of the windpipe under the skin of the neck. I slipped the blade between the spine and the windpipe and pulled the blade up and out, severing it. But the bird continued to try to breathe, and now I could hear rasping coming from the exposed windpipe.

Finally, the knife found a notch in the spine. I pressed with my force, and pulled on the head. The spine cracked and I cut through the last bit of skin connecting the head to the body. I stood up. The turkey’s head was in my hand and its lifeless body lay on the ground beneath me.

“Ugh,” I threw the head down on the ground. I was shaking a little bit, jacked up on adrenaline. “Wow,” I chuckled, “that was ridiculous.”

Rene went next, with Zack holding down the bird.

Rene was much more experienced and efficient than I was, and the turkey’s head came off after only 10 or so seconds of sawing. However, Rene had cut very close to the base of the head, and this particular turkey was not totally ready to die.

Zack held down the turkey as it began to flap its wings.

“Don’t let go,” said Rene, “it might fly away.”

At that moment, the neck, which Zack was not holding down, turned up and looked Zack in the face. It then began spraying blood…everywhere.

The turkey flapped and flapped and sprayed and sprayed. For two minutes Rene and I howled with laughter and Zack continued his grim task, holding the turkey down as it sprayed him with blood.

Zack was to kill the last turkey and it was my turn to hold the bird down. Having studied my and Rene’s approach, Zack pulled the head firmly away from the body and quickly sawed through the neck. Learning from Zack’s experience, I held down the body with one hand and pinched the neck down to the ground. The body struggled for about a minute, then went still.

The next task was plucking.

Muzehe, Gabby, and I each grabbed a bird and a pot of boiling water. We poured the water over the turkeys, which blanched the feathers. They were surprisingly easy to pull out. Everyone I had asked told me that plucking is a pain, but it seemed very easy.

At first.

I looked over and noticed Gabby and Muzehe’s turkeys looked much less plucked than mine. I realized that they were being very deliberate, removing 100% of the feathers from a particular area before moving on. On the other hand, my bird now only had 5% of its feathers left, but they were scattered more or less evenly across the bird. I went back and plucked each remaining feather individually.

20 minutes later, the birds were plucked. Now Gabby and Muzehe took over completely. They first removed the stomach through the base of the neck. Then they cut into the bottom of the turkey to remove the intestines and other organs. It was fascinating to watch. Also grim.

After the birds were plucked and cleaned, we bagged them in the few plastic bags we had, and put them in the refrigerator to chill overnight.

On Wednesday morning, I fired up my computer and searched for “turkey recipe” on Google. I found a Thanksgiving turkey recipe by Alton Brown, of Food Network.

Back in my sophomore year of college, I watched a decent amount of Food Network. Alton Brown hosts a show called “Good Eats”. Alton distinguishes himself by applying ‘food science’ to his cooking methods. He thinks about how heat and chemicals interact in a dish. He clearly loves the process of cooking. He’s a quirky dude, a bit of a nerd, but his food always looks incredible.

The recipe called for the turkeys to soak overnight in 5 gallons of brined. So I got out the big pot and added salt, sugar, and spices to boiling water. I prepared several gallons of the stuff and put it in the fridge to cool.

The brine needs to stay cold to prevent any bacteria from getting the wrong idea, so I also prepped a bunch of ice. Since we only have two ice trays, this meant checking the ice every few hours, emptying ice into the bucket, and adding water to the trays to make more.

That night, I thoroughly washed out our big garbage can. I put the three turkeys in it, and then added the gallons of brine. I put a big rock in a plastic bag to keep the turkeys submerged. Then I added the ice.

Finally, I refilled the trays and went to bed.

The next morning, I boiled apples, cinnamon, and onions. I washed the birds and put them on our only cooking sheet. I added the ‘aromatic’ mixture to the bird’s cavities, coated them in olive oil, rosemary, and sage, turned the oven on, and put the birds in.

Several hour later, I dined with our team and about 20 guests (Muzungus and Rwandan friends). Even though I was exhausted from cooking all day, I greatly enjoyed the event.

…

Later, I reflected that I was very glad to have had the experience of killing the turkeys, but at first I wasn’t sure why.

Originally, I simply thought of the experience as a rejection of the hypocrisy of eating meat but never preparing it. And that’s true, but it’s not the whole story.

There are many things that we do in modern society which are removed from our natures. Sitting in an office for 12 hours a day is an obvious example. We submit to the modern life because it enables the way we prefer to live. The efficiency generated through the division of labor frees up time and resources for the things we like – a nice apartment, tasty food, a laptop, leather couches, a decent sized TV (with cable, DVR, and HBO of course), and an iPhone. But there is something lost in the efficiencies that allow us to own these things. Through the daily trudge, there can be a disconnection of life and living.

The life and living disconnection limits the joy of life. In a Platonic sense, we feed only our appetites and not our souls. There’s that empty feeling of a Sunday afternoon spent on the couch – dulling your senses before the work week begins. That’s not living – it’s surviving life.

I was glad to have the experience of a carnivore – to find an animal, to kill it, and to eat it. I watched the turkeys bleed and suffer and die before me. I felt the regret of killing, the power of taking a life, and the joy of a small task of living.

The experience increased the value and joy of the meal. I was connected – through a shared experience – to my meal. I was more thankful of the ability to be with friends and to feel alive. Zack says that the turkeys were the best he’s ever had at Thanksgiving. I suspect that’s as much related to the value of the experience as to our skills in the kitchen.

It was not pretty, it was a little bit sad, but it was a thanksfull experience – it made me happy to be living.

The whole process was very deliberate. There was joy in experiencing each of the iterative tasks – killing and cleaning the birds, preparing the brine, cooking the meal, and sharing the meal with friends. The division of labor of modern society allows us to feed our appetites without thinking too much about the joy of experiencing the whole process.

That said, I do not believe that modernity is unredeemable – we got the turkeys from a farm, we drove them home in our SUV, the recipe came from the Food Network website. Ask any of the people that use Shingiro health center if they enjoy growing their own food, preparing it and cooking it. It’s not possible in their context of extreme poverty.

The efficiencies of modern life are preferable to a life in the poverty of complete self-reliance.

But life and living are much more enjoyable when connected.