Animal Sacrifices

So we have been trying to integrate some meat into our diet. Attempt 1: Mr. Pollo frozen chicken. Standard. Attempt 2: Christina and I went to a local chicken vendor and ordered a couple pounds of breast meat. At this particular establishment chickens arrive in trucks every morning and those which we don´t see in the streets being trained for cockfights turn into somebody´s dinner. At least we know it´s fresh; our little bird was hacked to bits in front of us and still had pieces of feathers hanging on it when we brought it home. We soon turned little chicky into Coca Cola chicken (recipe for this and many others courtesy of Christina´s friends at the soup kitchen where she works) and it was delicious! Attempt 3: Yesterday we walked over to the least developed area of Arbolito, Sector 4 (we live in Sector 3), for a birthday lunch for Leo, one of our kiddos at Semillas. The family killed a pig for us. Background information: the mother had previously told us she was going to kill a duck for us and, thinking something was lost in translation, we thought nothing of it until a couple of my community mates walked the kids home after Semillas and their mother, Maria, presented them with a fully prepared duck dinner (seco de duck) to-go. So this time when little Melena told us they were going to kill a pig for us we knew they meant business. The first course of pig soup was a little tough to get down (intestines or sausage?) but things got better with the second plate and the cake. We have been working on venturing out into the neighborhood more so this weekend was a success in that department.

We are planning out first weekend trip to Puerto Lopez and Isla de la Plata, a national park on an island that fancies itself the poor man´s Galapogos so I´ll keep you posted on our travels.