Carnage

*I wanted to write this article with a surprise ending, but in this age of African uproar and widespread violence in the news, I’m going to give away the ending before you get too caught up in my vivid imagery… it’s a monkey.*

After today, I will never be the same… I saw one of my ancestors being savagely slaughtered and butchered for his meat.

I watched as the murderer cut off each foot. Each hand.

On one detached hand, the fingers lay splayed to the sides, still rigid in fear and shock at actually having been captured. The other lonely hand seems to have accepted it… its large knuckles curve slightly into a moon shape, seeming to finger the fine grained red dust as a last acknowledgement of beauty in the world the victim would never see again.

I watched the butcher carelessly crack bones apart at the joints.

I stared at the victim’s vacant eyes, and, perhaps out of subconscious sympathy, my mouth took on the same slack jawed look of disbelief.

After fully dismembering the body, the butcher reached into the chest cavity, and like savage sacrificial offerings of the past, pulled all of the innards out… something was still fastened, so in a sick chain of events, the innards pulled on the muscles, the muscles pulled the spine, and the head sickening descended into the neck, if only momentarily.

After apparent eons of agony, they finally hacked off the head. THWACK, THWACK, THWACK, and it rolled away. Grinning like the maniacs they are, the butchers chased it down, and held it dangling equidistant from their mad smiles and my face, then offered it to me as a gift. I took cautious steps backwards, not wanting to anger them with my revulsion, but not wanting to appear too eager either.

The cloud of flies was immense; the crowd of people was too. I cautiously picked my way backwards, never losing eye contact with the disembodied head and its sad, dead eyes.

I found myself shocked that so many would want to witness this carnage, but unable to pull myself away.

And later that day, just to say I did… I ate a piece of the victim.

Yes… I ate monkey.