CHICKEN!

            The truck bounced along a very poorly maintained dirt road, bound for a small village in the Gog region. Trees, bushes, and plants of a billion varieties lined the road, impenetrable to the human eye. Short, leafy bushes covered the ground, the gaps between them filled with elephant grass that reached six or seven feet, sometimes ten or more. Tall, wiry trees filled the rest of the view upward. The entire scene seemed composed of the same brilliant, shimmering, almost glowing shade of green, as if the wellspring of the world was beneath our feet and the plants were constantly inebriated by it. Most interesting and amazing to me were massive trees spaced hundreds of feet apart, as if each one guarded a separate realm. These behemoths stretched (from what I could tell) one or two hundred feet into the air, the crests of their bulky, wooded heads spreading a fan of the same vivid viridescence to the sky. A massive ‘thud’ shook the entire truck, throwing my head against the window and jerking my attention away from the trees.

Ethiopia didn’t have a parks and rec program to maintain it’s roads. Hence the massive potholes that sent my butt flying into my skull every few seconds if the driver couldn’t dodge them. He was driving at a ridiculous speed, as if a horde of eight-year-old vendors at the merkata in Addis Abeba were chasing him down to sell him “banana gum! Five birr! Just five birr!” This hell-bent speed combined with an attempt to dodge the worst of the potholes sent the dusty white truck careening across the road like a cockroach that just took a swim in a pot of coffee. Six or seven hitchhikers sat in the truck bed; any vehicle moving along this road was rare and easy prey for swarms of people wanting quick passage.

            We shot past several groups of people, who all scrambled for their lives to get off the road as our impatient Amharic driver, his brighter skin contrasting heavily with the sable skin of the Anuaks, relentlessly laid his foot on the gas. On several occasions, a small, turkey-like bird would be in the middle of the road, its long neck and small head swaying as it surveyed the white hunk of steel hurtling toward it. Clueless to its impending doom, we simply plowed straight over it. I never saw the pulverized feathery remains of our many victims, due to the people crammed in the back.

            We soon arrived at our destination, a trail of feathers and panicked Anuaks stretching miles behind us. The hitchhikers simply gathered their meager belongings and went about their business as if tailbone-cracking flights through the jungle happened every day. At least I was safe in the cab; somehow they had managed to avoid flying into a tree full of baboons.

            We had brought several hundred dollars worth of medication with us along with some medical equipment, and were planning to run an all-day clinic for the locals. A doctor’s station (built by the British) was there, but there hadn’t been a doctor or nurse in it for years.

            Hence the huge line of people wanting help. Most of them just had an infection of some kind, which a simple antibiotic could fix, but some of them had sores, parasites, and tumors. My job was simply to take each person’s blood pressure and pulse, which I didn’t resent at all since I was there to help in whatever way I could. Some of these folks, however, didn’t take kindly to a foreign piece of velcro and plastic strapped to their arm. Which, of course, meant their heart rate was astronomically high.

One wiry woman, probably around forty years of age, sat down in the chair in front of me with eyes the size of golf balls as she eyed the small device I held in my hands, her thin, hollow face a mask of fear. A heavy set man with soft features and kind eyes had his hand on her shoulder to reassure her as I attached the device to her arm. Her heart rate instantly jumped to over 160 beats per minute, and she began visibly panting. She gripped my arm with her right hand in a vise-like grip, which in turn caused my heart rate to skyrocket. We eyed each other, both afraid of what one might do to the other, our hearts mutually running pell-mell until Omot (our nurse) leaned over and told me to just take it off. I gladly complied.

Occasionally I got the feeling that I really wasn’t doing anything of value, then shrugged my shoulders and continued since Omot was making a point of scribbling down all the numbers I relayed to him.

            A group of ladies behind the building, who all spent their days cooking and sewing and spanking children, began preparations for our lunch. One of them hunted down a little boy who couldn’t have been much older than four years old and jabbered at him in machine gun Anuak. He nodded his head deferentially and rounded up a posse of little Ethiopian terrors, and they promptly took off running after a chicken that was wandering the grounds.

            For about ten minutes the chase continued. I found it terribly difficult to focus on my task and observe this frantic chase at the same time. I began to lose hope that the squad of chicken hunters would succeed in their quest, since the chicken clearly outstripped them all in speed on its absurd chunky legs, its beady black eyes wide with unadulterated terror.

            The chicken then made its fatal mistake.

            It ran into the old doctor’s station.

            The yelling, chattering horde of little boys went in hot on its heels. A horrendous squawk sounded within the building. The gang soon sauntered out of the cement block structure, smug grins on their faces, their leader dragging the unfortunate chicken by the legs, frantically squirming and clucking.

            We had chicken for lunch.