Wednesday, 6 November 2013

A story

15th of October, we were supposed to send in a rapport, but since I never got this, I had to do it now (after I asked for it).
I was asked to write about a positive experience, and formulate it as a story. Well, I put some effort in it, and here is the result:

1.    Please give an example of a positive experience either from work, the host family or from the community you live in. Please formulate this as a story.

A Story
One afternoon Ruben, a sports volunteer from Norway, came home from work. It was another quiet day at the office, where he hadn’t done anything specific, but coming home to his host family always cheered him up, so did this day, indeed it did.
He came in the door with his bike under his arm, he was a strong Norwegian this guy. He could easily lift two mielie - meal bags if he had to. But that’s not what this story is about, it’s about a chicken, which is about to die!
When Ruben walked in the door David, his host-dad, was smiling a little bit more than normal and he said he’d been given a bird. Ruben didn’t understand what he meant, and walking in to his room to put his bike there. When he got back out in the living room David explained. David was doing some counselling for a couple which was getting married, and this day, on the last day of counselling they brought a chicken as a gift. “Cool!” Ruben said, “what are we going to do with it?!” David explained that they would have to kill it, since they had no room (or interest) to take care of it. Ruben got more excited and shouted: “Can I kill it?!!” David said, sure, that wouldn’t be a problem. The chicken-killing would happen sometime during the same evening.
Time went on. Hours felt like days. The chicken was still sitting on the balcony. It was a white 5-6 months old chicken. Nice and fat.
Then the time had come. They had to kill it on the balcony, because a mozongo killing a chicken in the back yard would draw too much attention. Another mozongo came to watch the whole thing, Anja, who was Rubens neighbour; she was helping him filming it.
Ruben was given a bread knife first, and asked if that was the knife he would cut the chickens throat with, no, he got another knife, a sharper one.
David was holding the chickens body, and nervously Ruben grabbed the chickens head with his left hand, holding the knife with his right. This was a natural position for Ruben, since he was right handed, everyone knew Ruben was right handed, he always held his book with his right hand, always. And by now, 2 months into his volunteer work, Ruben had read 6 books already, including Jo Nesbøs “Panserhjerte”.
Back to the story; Ruben was holding the chickens head and looked at David, he gave him the “do it” nod, and Rubens hand was shaking a little bit before the knife cut into the chickens throat. It went so quickly, Ruben didn’t stop until he got about half way, and the blood was flowing out into the pan they had placed below the chicken. The blood didn’t stop, and some of it dripped over Rubens fingers, it was warm, dark-red and fresh. The blood kept coming and coming, until Ruben was told to cut the head off. So he did. The chicken was dead.
Afterwards they dipped the chicken in boiled water, and start plucking the feathers off, and it was almost falling off before they even touched it. After five minutes the chicken looked like a chicken in any supermarket, only with legs, so Ruben and his host brother, Daniel, cut off the legs. Then Ruben got to cut the chicken open and take the intestines out, they were still warm.
Then Ruben said: “What are we going to slaughter next time David?” David looked at Ruben with his big white smiley teeth, and said: “a goat”


Hopefully the story will continue…


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