Bribery, Corruption and DINNER!

So Tuesday, an ordinary kind of day; went off to one of the local schools to supervise the third year students on their teaching practice – normal, normal. Overcrowded classrooms, no electricity, some good teaching, some not so good teaching – the usual. Then just as we were about to leave one of the student comes running up to us holding a guinea fowl – a gift for me apparently! Now, at this point I’m far to stunned to actually do anything useful, so just shuffle away from the sqwarking bird – well I didn’t want to touch it. So our driver grabbed it and brought it back to Boscos where they tied it to the gas cylinder in my kitchen. At this point there was only one course of action – find Dinah! Dinah is my housemate who is Ghanaian and I was just hoping she’d deal with the bird in our kitchen. Luckily upon finding her and demanding if she knew what to do with it, she said ‘of course’ and then proceeded to laugh at me.

So after work she and Sarah (another Ghanaian friend) set to it – in the photos you can see the beginning and end result. Let’s just say I didn’t watch or assist with some of the process, but let’s just say it was quick and hopefully painless. However after all that was done we had a feast – guinea fowl in a tomato stew and yam- yum yum yum. Felt rather strange to be eating something you’d actually seen alive and kicking a few hours before, but I guess that’s the reality of meat, we just don’t have to face it too often at home.

Then feeling nicely stuffed a thought suddenly occurred to me – had I just taken, killed and eaten a bribe of some kind? Bribery and corruptness is common place in the Ghanaian education system. (75% of girls in Senior Secondary Schools have been asked for sexual favours by tutors…) I hope not, but then again it’s too late now; the birds been eaten and their marks have been handed in (unchanged from pre-guinea fowl giftage I might add) but I wonder if that was the intention or not?