Avian Flu in Cairo

by Laura Mansfield

Avian flu has been confirmed in Cairo, and one woman has already died. Chickens, ducks, pigeons, and turkeys are dying in large numbers, and in many cases, the Egyptian fellahin are throwing the carcasses into the Nile River.

Fears that the dead and possibly infected fowl carcasses in Egypt’s primary water source have caused those who can afford it to start stocking up on bottled water.

One of the reasons for the rapid spread of Avian Flu in third world countries, according to scientists, is the close proximity in which people and their animals and birds live to one another.

In Cairo, for example, most of the lower classes live crowded in one or two room apartments. For several months of the year, they may have a goat or sheet tethered on their balcony, or in the entranceway to their flat. Often they have small wooden cages containing chickens, ducks, and pigeons on their balconies, or in some cases on the roof of their building. In many cases, the roof of an apartment building may host the poultry farms of several building residents.

And in the midst of the chickens and ducks and goats, the children run and play, completely oblivious to the unsanitary conditions that surround them.

According to most research, those most likely to contact avian flu are the people who have close contact with infected birds.

In Egypt, as in many third world countries, that covers a significant portion of the population.

In the United States, most people buy chicken from a supermarket. That chicken probably came from a mass-production type of chicken farm. The chicken will be plucked, gutted, and in many cases cut neatly into pieces before being shrink-wrapped onto a Styrofoam tray.

In Cairo, your chicken probably came from one of tens of thousands of private chicken farms. Each of those farms will house between a few dozen chickens to perhaps a hundred chickens at a time. Those chickens will then be sold to a neighborhood poultry seller in the market.

To get the chicken to the poultry seller, in most cases the woman of the household will take the chicken and put it in a wooden crate for transport. She’ll then balance the wooden crate on her head over the long black wrap that serves as her veil. Often you’ll see these women with a small toddler balanced on her shoulder, and another child holding her hand as she walks, catches a bus, or even catches the metro or a train en route to the poultry seller.

The poultry seller will put those chickens, along with chickens that he has purchased from dozens of other independent chicken farms, into small wooden crates, often 3 or 4 chickens to a crate.

Most of the time, he will then sell those chickens in an open air market. Because of the way the markets, or souqs, are structured, the poultry “shops” are often in close proximity to each other.

When a customer wants to buy a chicken, she goes into the market, and selects a live chicken. She can have the vendor slaughter the chicken, or she can buy the chicken live. If she buys the chicken live, then the vendor will put it in a small wooden crate, and she will take it with her.

If she opts to have the chicken slaughtered, the vendor will cut the throat of the chicken in accordance with Islamic law, and throw it into a communal barrel where the chicken will bleed to death in the same space where hundreds of other chickens have been killed.

Once the chicken is dead, most Egyptian women simply take it home and pluck the feathers off and gut the chicken at home.

Since dried chicken feces are believed to be a major source of infection, it is easy to see that there are many many opportunities for the disease to spread.

The article below, an excerpt from my book Inshallah, describes my personal experiences buying chicken in Cairo.

Close Encounters of the Fowlest Kind

by Laura Mansfield

The following is taken from Laura Mansfield's book, Inshallah, which outlines her experiences in Egypt. For more information, or to order a copy of the book click here.

Siham greeted me, and said “Laura, do you want to go to the market with me?”

That sounded promising. I had already discovered that the kitchen had absolutely nothing that was even remotely familiar to me in the way of food except tomatoes. It seemed like a great idea – I would get some real food in the kitchen.

We went downstairs, and I headed straight for Siham’s car. She called after me, “Where are you going, Laura?”

It seemed that we were walking to the market.

That had never occurred to me.

We set out on foot, past the donkey driven carts, past the government building that smelled of urine, into alleyways barely wide enough for a car to go one way.

Once, Siham had to pull me out of the way of falling water. She pointed up at the balcony overhanging the narrow street. A woman was clearly doing her wash on the balcony; she tossed the rinse water over into the street, narrowly missing me. The woman smiled and waved to me. “Ya Hawagaya”, she called. “Hello foreign lady,” laughing at how close she had come to drenching me.

As we walked, Siham told me we were going to buy chicken, vegetables, spices, and tea. That sounded simple enough. The whole time, I was looking around for a Bi-Lo or a SafeWay.

We came to a small intersection; the stench of donkey dung mixed with the pungent smells of cinnamon, turmeric, and cloves.

As I looked around, I saw what I decided had to be a butcher’s shop. But the headless meat carcasses were hanging out over the street on meat hooks; a row of cow heads was lined up on the counter top. Flies swarmed all over the shop, and covered the meat carcasses. I was immediately repulsed.

Scrawny half starved cats of all ages ran through the shop, snatching up the stray pieces of meat that flew off as the butcher used his cleaver to cut slabs of meat off one of the carcasses. One cat stopped to rub against my ankles, apparently recognizing that the cat lover in me. It startled me, and I jumped back, barely missing a passing donkey cart.

“What do you think of this chicken?” Siham’s voice broke into my thoughts. I turned suddenly, and found myself face to face with a live chicken, his beak less than six inches from my face. I let what must have been a small shriek. I’m not sure who was more startled, me or the chicken!

Now I’m not a city girl; I knew where fried chicken comes from, and I’m certainly not afraid of chickens. After all, when I was a little girl, my Grandma Arnie had given me a pet chicken that I called “Chicken Little”. When “Chicken Little” got too old to keep in our back yard, she went to live at Grandma Arnie’s home in the country, because she had a chicken coop.

I didn’t know at the time that Grandma Arnie’s plan was for “Chicken Little” to become the main ingredient in a chicken and rice dinner.

But turning into lunch was not Chicken Little’s destiny. Every time I went to Grandma Arnie’s, Chicken Little was running around in the chicken coop, apparently a happy fowl.

When I got older, Mom told me that every time Grandma Arnie went out to kill Chicken Little, she thought about me, and could not do the deed. Chicken Little eventually died of old age in the chicken coop.

Now, 18 years later, I was face to face with another live chicken, and neither the chicken nor I was very happy about the method of introduction.

Surely this was a practical joke, and this was someone’s pet chicken.

I looked around.

A street vendor next to the butcher was standing in front of me, holding the poor frightened chicken by the neck. A few stray black feathers drifted down around us. There were stacks of wooden cages, each holding several chickens.

I was puzzled. Were these pet chickens? What did these live chickens have to do with dinner?

I mumbled something to the effect that it certainly did look like a nice chicken to me. Siham asked if I wanted to slaughter it at home, or did I want the chicken vendor to take care of it for me.

Huh? Me? The extent of my personal willingness to take another life was pretty much limited to slapping the mosquitoes that inhabited the coastal plains of South Carolina, and occasionally swatting other insects.

Before I could answer, the chicken was on the big round block in front of the chicken seller, and a meat cleaver came down on the chicken’s neck, partially severing the head. The frightened chicken flapped his wings, struggling, illustrating that the phrase “running around like a chicken with his head chopped off” has its basis in reality.

The chicken man threw the struggling chicken into a large 50 gallon drum, put the lid on, and spoke to Siham. “We come back later when the chicken is dead” Siham told me.

How in the world was I going to explain to Siham that there was no way I was going to eat this chicken? I wasn’t used to having to meet and greet my food while it was still alive!

But I kept silent and we walked deeper into the bowels of the market. Siham stopped in front of a stall with an incredible assortment of fresh vegetables.

The tomatoes, zucchini, green beans, romaine lettuce, and cucumbers were all familiar. But what were those big things that looked like cauliflower on steroids? And why was the okra so big? I tried to ask the questions, but Siham’s English was limited, and my Arabic at the time was pretty much nonexistent.

Siham loaded up the shopping bag with fresh vegetables, and we started our trek back to the chicken seller. By the time we arrived, the chicken had gone to meet his maker, and the seller pulled the carcass out of the drum, and started wrapping it in paper, feathers, head, and all.

I reached out and pointed to the feathers and said “No” in English.

Siham understood me and laughed. “You don’t know how to take feathers off chicken?”, she asked. She told the vendor to pluck the chicken.

He handed the dead chicken to a small boy, maybe seven or eight years old, standing next to him. The boy took the chicken, walked over to a pot of boiling water, and immersed the chicken for a moment.

While he pulled the chicken out of the pot, and started removing the feathers, the chicken vendor decided to take advantage of the moment and teach me a word of Arabic. He pointed to the chickens and said something that sounded like “frakh”.

I smiled, reached out to the nearest chicken, and said “frakh”, pleased that I now at least knew enough to buy a chicken. I would learn later that I did not know nearly as much about chickens as I thought I did!

The above is taken from Laura Mansfield's book, Inshallah, which outlines her experiences in Egypt. For more information, or to order a copy of the book click here.

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