Sunday night was a cross between a biology class, a lesson on what to do with gifts from friends in West Africa, and a murder/dinner.  First the gift:  A friend from the Peace Corp was given a gift from a business partner in her village.  It was a small white and gray rabbit (we all know where this is going).  Let the learning begin.  This was not meant to be a pet.  It was of course meant to be dinner.  One issue we had was that no one knew how to prepare a live rabbit for dinner other than making it dead (and how could we kill him, he was so cute).
As none of us knew how and had never before skinned a rabbit we were stuck and one member of the group threatened to cook beef instead.  We couldn’t have that.   This rabbit was meant to be dinner and dinner he would BE!  So I went on youtube to find out how to skin, gut, and butcher a rabbit.     With my 10-minute crash course on preparing rabbit for dinner we had some leverage in the negotiations for what to do about dinner.  The hook went like this “I brought someone who can skin the rabbit if someone else will kill it” my friend reported, making me sound like some sort of expert.
So many choices for how to kill “pot-roast” (Should have named him stew.  It would have been more befitting his fate).  I’ll spare you the details but needless to say he ended up dead . . . He was tasty mixed up with some veggies and spice.  No one got sick (other than the guy who got malaria, but that’s not because of the food) so I would say that I did a pretty good job at guessing how to skin and gut Thumper.
Anyway, I am enjoying learning all kinds of new things during my stay.  I believe the next item on the menu is hedge-hog, I’ll keep you updated.
Ben Roberts
Teacher, English Language Institute, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso