Hip Hop Anonymous

(Big Daddy Reference)

(I know somebody out there did not get it and I felt bad so yea. Go watch it I enjoyed it)

Meat here is a crap shoot. If you are in village it is even sketchier. I have eaten hippo since I arrived at site. I could not tell you what it tasted like because they have no concept of cooking meat here. Everything comes out tasting like a hockey puck. Although I have learned this is not necessarily a bad thing. Just in the case of the hippo, not only was I unsure of how long it had been dead. At least several hours, by the time they got it back to where we were. It also got drug in a river that people don’t swim in for a couple of reason. 1) Gambians can’t swim. 2) There are things that live in the river that you don’t want inside of you. Schisto, worms, and a host of other things.

So that being said here comes said hippo with a pretty good size whole in his head, big gun is what I am hoping caused that. The hippo is being drug down the river at a painfully slow pace by what looks like a not so sea worthy boat. But eventually they managed to find a clearing and throw us a line that is attached to said hippo. Then we have the fun task of dragging said hippo ashore. 50 people plus and we just barely drag this stupid thing ashore. Now if any of you have anger or rage issue the Gambia is perfect for you. Because once you drag said big dead hippo ashore you get to cut his lumpy butt apart, but this is not some task for no pocket knife or even a buck knife. Oh no, here you grab your handy machete that just earlier today you were cutting trees down with, and yesterday you were using it to dig holes for your fence. So it is nice and clean right now of course because you wash and sharpen it every night, well maybe not, but a little dirt and tree bark is good for you right.

Now after you have proceeded to hack off a good chunk of what was his front shoulder you are faced with another fun problem. What do you do with this 30 lb chuck of meat. There is still a big hippo that needs cut to pieces and you can’t be running back to town which is over 2 miles through the bush every time you get a chuck of meat. So you do the next logical thing. Spread some Neem branches on the ground and start making a big pile. After you have cut up said big lumpy hippo into nice manageable chunks. You carefully toss all of this meat on the back of a dusty donkey cart and proceed back through the bush to town where you now have to cut up these 30 lb hunks of meat.

One small problem, out here there is no such thing as a cutting board or a table for that matter. So again Gambians being the resourceful and adaptable people they are use the next best thing. A nice dust piece of rusty corrugated steel. You know the kind that go up on the side of poll barns. Now it has been about 12 plus hours since said hippo was shot. In my village electricity is scarce and a refrigerator does not exist, but over the course of the next 2 days you are going to eat hippo. Did I mention that is cooked down to a hockey puck?

~ by mattcarte on 03/03/2010.