There's a chicken in my kitchen!

Here are a few ways I feel that I am integrating to Ecuadorian culture:

1. When I hear music, I get the urge to dance.

2. I don’t move for people on the ranchera.  I make them climb over me with their bags and kids and whatever else so that I can maintain my highly coveted outside seat.

3. After a hard day’s work at a minga, I want to roll up my shirt and walk around with my belly exposed like every coastal man (and some women) you will meet.

4.  The presence of chickens no longer surprises me… Anywhere.

The idea for this blog came to me one day when I was at a local soccer tournament with my friend Sarah, and a handful of hens and chicks wandered through the field.  It didn’t really register to either of us, and of course the teams just continued to play around them, at which point I realized that in the last 5 months, it has become completely normal to see chickens running wild and unattended.

I admit I was a little alarmed when I first arrived at site to see the number of chickens in and around our house.  My host mom has about 22 (mas o menos) chickens and roosters, but new chicks are constantly appearing.  The first time a fellow PCV (one of the city-folk) came to visit, after stumbling down to the bathroom in the dark one night, he mentioned over breakfast that he thinks he may have stepped on a chicken on his way to the sink.  Affirmative, I said, there is always at least one chicken that sneaks into the kitchen overnight.  In fact, there is one that always lives in a box next to our washing machine and just lays and warms eggs ‘round the clock.

My favorite chicky-anecdote is from the night that I was making some huevos duros to grab the next morning before a long and early bus ride.  After they had boiled, I walked them over to the fridge when I noticed there was a large rooster tied up by his foot in the corner.  He was definitely giving me the stink eye, and I realized that I may have just hard-boiled some of his kin.  I thought to myself “Oh, well this is a little awkward..” and the next morning I had every intention of avoiding eye contact when I went to retrieve them.  To my surprise, when I flipped the light on in the kitchen, a different chicken started squawking and revealed herself from her sleeping place behind the refrigerator and subsequently scared the mierda out of me.   I thought to myself “Well, well… looks like this rooster snuck in a little chick for a conjugal visit..” and then I realized that I need to stop personifying animals that may be dinner tomorrow (or whose offspring may be breakfast today).*

*Note: when I returned from this trip, there was no longer a rooster tied up in the corner… I will leave it to your imagination what might have become of him.