Snapshot: The Tale of the Clucking Chicken

This entry, along with several future entry, offers a glimpse into my nomadic life in Ethiopia. It won’t be long, and there won’t be some underlying lesson to be learned about being a nomad or experiencing a detached life from certain stresses of the American Dream. Instead, these will serve as postcards from where I find myself here and there.

Ethiopia has many unique features ranging from crater lakes to churches hewn out of rocks. Beyond the scope of travelesque locales, Ethiopia boasts 13 months of sunshine as they follow the Julian calendar system. Months are evenly dispersed into 30 days each with a 13th month having five or six days, depending on a leap year. Due to this fact, international holidays are typically off by a week or so. Therefore, while much of the Gregorian world is in the wake of having celebrated Christmas a week ago, Ethiopians are on the cusp where they will celebrate on January 7th.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. 

Trees are being sold out in front of stores; festive decorations are strung around the necks of street merchants hopping from car to car near the busy bus station; Christmas music plays in many shop stereos. But the biggest attraction to see would be the hubs of animals dotted along the street awaiting their holiday fates.

https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/article/holiday-feast-finding-right-ingredients

Chickens and goats are the primary animals being sold on nearly every street side due to the convenience of grabbing one and calling for a taxi. (Yes, it is not an uncommon sight to see a goat strapped on top of a taxi or a person holding a live chicken by the talons as they sit next to you.)

http://egansaltitudeadventures.blogspot.com/2010/11/ethiopia-by-picture.html?m=1

I don’t buy live animals for the main fact I don’t want to kill it or transform it into the holiday meal I’m accustomed to eating. Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean I’m a stranger to having live animals just chilling in my compound awaiting their “transformation day” that might still be a few days out.

This year is no different. My landlord bought a (big) chicken for her holiday meal on Saturday, even though Christmas is on Tuesday. This means that it will be fed and cared for for at least two days. 

Chaos rung throughout the house on the first morning after it found its new home on one of the steps in the stairwell leading up to my loft.

The cement walls reverberated the boisterous cries of a chicken (probably rooster) distraught for several early morning hours, well before the crack of dawn.

Croohoo crhoohoo. 

It would have been tolerable if it were constant, perhaps, as I imagine I would have been able to adjust and eventually fall asleep. Instead, it was a torture camp to my slumber.

Crohoo Crhoohoo. 

Then silence.

I drifted off to sleep, just re-entering my REM sleep when…

Croohoo Crhroroororoo.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

All throughout the morning.

https://www.alittleofftrack.com/menz-guassa-ethiopia/

I’m not sure if he had some sort of animal kingdom sonar where he could detect my REM cycles, but he meticulously waited until I had just fallen asleep each time before he bellowed his sorrows of be re-homed.

Needless to say, I went to sleep around 7pm the next evening, my eyes bulging out due to exhaustion. 

Thankfully, the next morning bore no semblance to the inhumane effect on my sleep patterns. The chicken become accustomed to its new temporary home and has only voiced his presence a few times since.

All I can say is that my sleep-deprived brain is hoping the landlord offers me a plate of delicious doro wot in compensation for my sleep troubles. I can already smell the onions sautéing and the berbere wafting through the building.

Starting at the top and going around clockwise :

Cold tomato salad; collar greens; potatoes at cabbage; iceberg lettuce salad ; split pea stew; blank lentil stew; rice; spicy potatoes; Ethiopian style coleslaw; and in the center spicy red lentil stew. All served on injera, the staple bread. 

Melkam YeGena Be’al!

Merry Christmas!

-Kevin the Nomad