Saturday night cabin fever

November 6, 2010. I am writing this entry on my phone so please excuse the spelling or grammar mistakes. Its saturday evening and the sun is about to set. Last night was friday night just as it usually comes before saturday. But it doesnt feel like it because there is very little change in schedule. We do not sleep in, because the mahangu still needs to be pounded and the animals fed. The only thing that is different is there is no school. I still help out minimally in the household chores because i am inexperienced and unskilled at these matters. I can hardly retrieve water myself because the barrels are so large and heavy to pour. Today is saturday and i did not leave the homestead. I washed 6 pieces of clothing and maybe 7 dishes. I am still recovering from one of the 5 colds i have had so i did not have the energy to run. I moved lethargically from hut to hut, watching my one sister sing to the radio, drinking some oshikundu, watching my other sister sew fake hair into my mom's head. Things have become a part of a routine and it is quite nice but for some reason when it is saturday night, of the first weekend i will not see any other volunteers, it makes one feel a bit stir crazy. No tv, just a few books and the internet on my phone. One of the books i was reading is the diary of anne frank but i had to take a breather because it started to make me feel a bit trapped, all joking aside. Many amazing things have happened though. I watched my 11 year old brother behead a chicken with a machete last night. As its legs were still kicking the body was placed in boiling water, it was plucked, excess feathers burned over the fire, cooked and consumed. When i visited a neighbor, i plucked about 12 small birds you would find in our trees at home. The small lifeless beings in my hand made me feel sorry. I dont know what for. Maybe for my ignorance that small creatures like those were consumed by large creatures like us. Maybe because i think that the birds were also unaware and unprepared. Anyway i asked how you cook them and my neighbor said just like a chicken. Assuming i knew that you pull out the intestines and give them to the children to roast in the fire and eat. We ate the small birds this week. I took one and popped its baby bird body right into my mouth and crushed its fragile bones like i didnt know it was that same innocent songless corpse i had plucked before. Like it was popcorn shrimp. And it tasted like flamecooked chili pepper, you guessed it, chicken.