Malawi Beef

I'm up at 4:30 im the morning. It's cold and dark. Adam and I are trudging up the road to Chisenga's trading center to be their at 5am. Adam is making fun of me for making 'breakfast' or a scone a piece, buttered. Go ahead, laugh away chuckle-head, I know you'll eat the scone. Just watch.

We are sitting now under the only street light, the town of chisenga still deserted at this hour. We are supposed to be meeting Willy and Ameen, the two men who run the Hope orphanage. They are slaughtering a cow and Adam is dying to participate an show them the proper way to cut meat. The story of said cow is quite unfortunate. Willy and Ameen's father was out trying to herd the cows. A younge and healthy heifer was in heat and desperatly wanting to find a bull. So she refused to listsn and wandered over to a neighbors cattle. He took her rope and tried to pull her away. She tugged back. He fell. This happened maybe three times before the father got so angry he got a knife and hacked off one of the cow's ears. A few days later Adam and I are standing in the dark waiting to go to the pasture and kill the same cow. Nothing like an angry old man's grudge. I [personally think it was a terrible waste to kill a young healthy female cow who has the potential to give milk and birth just because and old man's pride was wounded.

Adam and I wait around til 6:30am. now adam's mad because he thinks they left without him and were going to miss the slaughter. He heads up to the orphanage to check for them, leaving me in the dark, under the streetlamp, with a knife and sharpener to defend myself...I must have freaked the hell out of people, sitting on a stump, hoodie pulled over my head, sharpening a large butcher's knife. By now some women are starting to walk around, fetchign water and a few men are going to a strange early morning prayer service where they sing one hymn and go home. To them i'm the crazy white girl sitting with a butcher knife in the middle of town. Luckily Adam comes and takes back his knife. By the Time Ameen shows up, he and two other boys are leading the cow. They just went to pick it up, a journy we had risen at 4:30am for and had already missed them. They didn't get to the center till 6:30am. Adam and I are just finishing my 'laughable' buttered scones. Ha, told ya he would eat it.

Except now the cow is going to be killed in front of me. Don't get me wrong, I liek to eat meat and I can even help butcher a carcass, but witnessing the actual death always makes me sick to my stomach. Even hearing it is not good for me. So for the actual slaughter I was serveral feet away, facing the town. Luckily Adam had a wonderfull sharp knife so their was very little sound and it was over quickly. I did not even have to watch them collect the blood from the slit throat into a large plastic bucket. Litterally everything is kept and sold here. Someone will buy that bucket of blood. I turned my head slightly and caught a glimpse of twitching leg and heard a whuffing sound but that was a close as my involvment witht he actual slaughter was. Prior Adam was petting the cow and looking at its chopped off ear. He was like, "Don't you want to come say hi tot he cow?" Of course not, that brief interaction, or even looking at the cow too long would further attach me to it and heighten my nausea. The vet, Mr. Mwiwa, came to inspect the cow after slaughter for TB and worms. Before the cow was killed he looked at the ear and nooded his head saying, "Yes, it has healed quite nicely."
....Anyone else find that a little er, odd?

Anyway, so this is how the slaughter goes, improved greatly by Adam's amazingly sharp knife (Often villagers only have a rusty, dull, wooden handle tied on knife. When Adam's knife dulled, he quickly sharpened i again and gave it back tot he butcher. They used it all day and marveled the whole time.)

The cow's legs are cobbled and a makeshift harness is tied to wrestle it to the ground. It is either on its side or just laying down. Then its head is tighted as tightly as possible to a tree. The rope is looped around the horns to the trunk so the neck is easily accessable. Their are no avaiable drugs or guns to kill the cow quickly. Its throat is cut and the blood collected into a bucket. Nevertheless, their is still a large puddle of blood in the grass. They literally almost sawed the head off. Better to almost saw off the head than not cut far enough.

After this I turn around and start watching. But remain sick for a while. It takes at least 20 minutes for me to put the 'animal' behind and focus on the 'carcass.' In fact I think my nausea faded about the same time the body stopped steaming.

Next the skin is removed. Slits from arm and leg pits to the ankle just above the hooves are cut. Around the ankles, they slit full circle. Then down the center, Across the groin. Then its alot of fine slicing, seperating the fat and musle from the hide which turns into its own butcher's mat and eventually is used to cover the chopped meat. First the belly, then the right side. Then rotate the cow to get to the other side. Milk oozes when they skin the udder.

From the slitting of the throat up to the placing on the butcher's block (A tree and a scale) and throughout most of the day, there are synapse still firing in the muscles, causing uncontrolable twitching.

Once the skinning is over, its time to quarter the carcass. Flies are already hoovering over the area in droves. The ribs are broken down the right and left sides with a panga knife(A large metal machete, in this case dull.) The sound is hollow yet muffled. They fold this back towards the tail to expose the innerds. The sternum piece is broken down later. Each leg is seperated. All of the insides are taken out. The local vet checks each section of cow for disease. This cow was young and healthy however so he finds nothing.

The vet likes to try and make clever comments. Not only did he joke about how 'nicely' the cow's ear had healed but also sassed Adam. When he asked the vet if he knew how to butcher meat and the different parts of the cow, the vet haugtily replied 'of course, they teach us in school'. Yet when Adam asked him where the T-bone steak came from, he had no clue. In fact, Adam had to say, 'yeah, isn't it here near the pelvis with the T-shapped bone...?'

Adam has been talkign through this whole process about the proper was to handle an animal and cut the meat. He continues when we move the meat to the butcher's block and he is cutting out fillets from the legs and the heart. He talks about flank steak, fillets, changing prices due to better portions of meat, proper buthcering, selling meat and bones sepearate...basically trying to enlighten the people. Unfortuantly they are all ignoring him and im the only one listening.

Its the Malawian way to sell meat by crushing up the bones into the meat and selling it together. It helps the sellers cause they sell less meat per KG. It jips the buyers cause they get shards of bone in their meat. Some even tried to argue with Adam, 'No! We like our meat with bones in it!' But its all show and a lie. In fact, Adam took all the meat off a bone and left the bone. Ameen sort of huffed and said no one will buy just bones. So Adam offered to come back and uy it if at the end of the day no one bought it. Someone bought it. how about, TOLD YA SO. When Adam and I buy meat we only uy 'steak', we make then give us a KG of real meat, no bones, no huge deposits of fat.

So as Adam is 'just enjoying' his meat dicing, I walk back to the slaughter area to watch them dissect the stomach. Almost all the organs are still laying back here on banana leaves. Emaciated doogs hoover around, stealing bits that the vet is throwing into the tall bushes and grass. I retrieve some intestine lining that has gotten stuck ont he top of the cushes, torturing a poor dog that wants it but would have to get too close to people and jump to get it. I think that dog loved me after that.

When they cut open the stomach, its filled with bright green, half digested grass. Literally, it was grass halfway digested to Manure. By the way the stomach is about as big a a beach ball, if not bigger and the heart is the size of half a human head. Anyway, the stomach is cleaned out and sold, just like the intestines. They sell every last bit of cow. In fact, only the head was left over that day and sold the next. The tail is even sold and often used in traditional dances and official ceremonies.

Adam and I got a KG of steak and also half a kg of heart. (I should probably mention we were on a meat eating binge because a cow had been butcher the previous day and we each at a half KG of beef that we grilled, wrapped in blankets in the smoky kitchen.) That night I fried up the heart while Adam marinated the steaks first in a rub of salt, garlic and peper, then marinated them in vinegar. Adam then grilled fillets while we sat in the kitchen. Ameen, who is also a welder, made Adam a cool little grill to stick over his three stone fire. We grilled and ate, making happy noises, until late at night. I fell asleep wrapped in a blanket, hoodie pulled up, belly full, sitting in the plastic lawn chair, smelling smoke and grilling steak. Despite what Colorado Mountain man Adam says, it does get cold in Africa.

Rain was gently pattering on the grass roof, smoke was wafting around the low enclosure. The last thing I heard from Adam was a mumbled happy noise. The boy enjoys nothing more than a good steak. I'll tell you, between ridiculous freshness and Adam's cooking, that was some of the best beef I have ever had.