Phil "The Rat Killer" Youngren

I awoke this morning to a beautiful day. The storm had passed, and although there wasn’t any smog here for it to have pushed out, in its wake were a clear blue sky and the sun. You big, radiant, welcome ball of burning gas, oh, how I love thee. On my usual morning venture to the latrine I noticed that the ground was frozen solid, as is often the case when the lack of clouds allows it to irradiate its heat to the cold, black, night sky. This welcome change of weather got me motivated.

I made breakfast, used my new drill (retail therapy?) to put up some hooks for my pans, and I did my laundry that had begun to smell fetid despite the cold weather. As I was reaching the climax of my laundry high, which happens when you have just 2 shirts left to rinse the soap out of, signaling the end of near frostbite conditions in your hands from cold pump water, Sello came up and sat down. Sello is one of the first students I met in Ha Sefako and is one of my favorite. He is 24 years old and will sit for his Form E exit exam in October. He had his two dogs with him. “Sello, are these your dogs.” “Yes, Sir.” “They look hungry.” Most dogs in Lesotho look hungry. Because they’re hungry. “The dogs run, Sir.” “Run for what?” “They hunt the ibex. I am coming from hunting, Sir.” Sello had a piece of rusted all-thread with an old faux-leather dog collar as a grip and one end beaten into a rough point. “Um, Sello, when was the last time you got an ibex?” I don’t have much of a hunting history, but from what I’ve seen on South Park, you usually need a rifle or assault rifle to hunt deer like creatures. I didn’t think his heavy piece of steel was going to do much when his dogs scared off some ibexs (ibexi?). Sello pointed to the less emaciated of the two dogs, “this one got one just here in the forest.” He then pointed to the 2 acre tree farm that the school has for growing firewood.

Naturally I was surprised. “I want to go. When will you go hunting again?” Sello laughed and showed his cartoonishly large, endearing smile and said, “next Saturday. I will come get you.” Awesome. I’m really gunning for some beginners luck. Anyway, we continued to chat about this and that and I went to hang my laundry on the line. Then I asked him what he was up to for the day. “I’m going to hunt rats.” “You mean rabbits?” Sello’s English isn’t fantastic, but pretty good. “No, rats. R-A-T-S. Rats.” “I want to go.” Again, the Sello laugh and smile. “Okay, I will come to get you at about 2” Again, Awesome. I had made a banana “bread” (what a misnomer that is with a cup of sugar in it) before laundry and cut half of it off and plated it. Then we headed up to Sello’s to see his 2 year old son that I had been bothering Sello to meet and also to say hello to his wife.

Needless to say his son is adorable and his wife is very funny. I know you’re all just going to skip down to the rat hunting anyway, so I’ll just get on with that.

I met up with Sello and Lechesa at about 2 as they were preparing their spears. They had each felled some saplings that were about 2 and a half meters long and trimmed off the branches, cut off the tips and pounded 8 inch pieces of steel fencing wire (3/16th inch diameter) into the ends. The spear tips were sharpened by first flattening them by mashing the end with a 5 lb sledge then grinding them with stones. I was to use Sello’s previously mentioned all-thread spear, which Lechesa laughed at because it is blunt and heavy. Not the preferred characteristics of a rat spear. We collected a few more boys and headed down to the fields.

The maize fields here are separated by boundaries of grass about 2 meters wide, and those was our hunting grounds. The six of us split into two groups. Sello took me under his wing, as the other group wasn’t real interested in the newbie blundering around while valuable rats ran past. The other group headed down the grass row about 30 meters and sat down and rummaged around in the grass for a minute. Sello said something to the other boy in our threesome and they started to sing, then they started to walk down the grass row doing the traditional Basotho man dance. It’s not an easy thing to describe, but here it goes. The right hand holds the spear towards the bottom with the upper arm parallel to the ground and elbow slightly bent so that the spear waves above the warrior. The back is straightened as though over compensating for a fear of Quazi Moto Syndrom while the knees are a little more than slightly bent. Locomotion is achieved by a kind of bouncy, but robot like, walk on the warrior’s toes. That description definitely didn’t nail it, but let’s move on with that picture in your mind. So we begin walking towards the other group, let’s call them Group 2, singing and stomping through the grass in an attempt to herd the rats towards them.

Recall, Group 2 is sitting down with their spears pointed directly down the rat runs that zig-zag through the grass. As we close in on Group 2 the anticipation is killing me. I’m expecting a massive skewering of rats. We’re 7 meters away, then 6, then 5, then 4, then 3, then… everybody just gives up and walks to the next patch of grass. Bugger. Two more mini-hunts go this same way before, as we’re just closing in on Group 2, one of the boys slings his spear down a rat run and yells, “TEO!” I don’t think ‘teo’ means anything, but sure enough he had a rat on his spear. Let’s be straight about this, it is not a NYC sewer rat. This is a Lesothan field rat. It doesn’t get pepperoni pizzas and bagels to eat, he gets plain field corn. He is small. Like pet mouse small. Everybody is pretty exited though and we move on to the next patch of grass.

40 minutes and 2 rat skewerings later I have been relieved of my spear and given a 2 foot long stick to just try whacking the rats with. What the Basotho boys don’t understand is that I have had training at this very thing. Never did I realize that all those games of Whack-A-Mole were training for rat hunting in Africa. But, there I was. Group 2 came singing, trampling down the grass and all the sudden I see little Fievel bolting down his run. WHACK! It really is just like the game, except no tickets come out. I raised both arms in victory. They laughed. “I’m not going to touch it.” Quizical looks. “Will you carry it for me?” I ask a small boy who isn’t allowed to carry a spear. He shrugs his shoulders and puts Fievel in his pocket.

We hunt a bit longer with no more success and decide to call it a day because the sun is close to dropping behind the mountains. On our way back up the hill towards home Sello asks, “Do you eat rats in America?” “Umm… no.” “Why?” “Um… have you ever heard of the bubonic plague?” “Buubonk… what?” “Hepa virus?” “Sir?” “Well, uh, rats in America carry diseases. Also, there isn’t much meat.” “Oh, yes, if you get maybe 5 or 10 rats you get some meat.”

As we rounded the corner to my door and Sello and Lechesa threw their spears into the ground and began to talk in Sesotho. “Sir, do you want 1 rat or 2?” “Well, I don’t know how to cook it, so why don’t you take my rat to your son.” More Sesotho, and I thought that bullet was dodged. “Lechesa and I will teach you how to cook it here.” Crap. Sello began to skin the rat, which surprisingly just consisted of him pulling the skin off, breaking the feet, head, and tail off and breaking the sternum to expose the vital organs. I warmed up some oil in the ole frying pan, added some salt and pepper and sautéed Fievel until he was golden brown. As I was cooking Fievel, Lechesa began to look nervous. I said as much, and Sello laughed and said that Lechesa thought that eating rats was for little kids. “Oh, rat hunting and eating is for little boys.” “Yes, Sir.” That made more sense.

When Fievel was done, we cut him in half and I chose the meaty looking hindquarters. Well, meaty might not by the right adjective. I mean, there was meat. And I ate it. But it was kind of like trying to get the meat off of the end part of the wing of a chicken. You can do it, but you burn more calories trying to eat it than you actually ingest.

So, there it is. I ate rat. It was okay, but if anybody ever tells you it tastes like chicken, they’re a liar.


In other, less interesting, but maybe more significant news, I finished my keyhole garden. I think it looks pretty good for my first building experience with stone. Next week I’m going to start visiting students’ homes who said they were starting to build gardens of their own. Hopefully I’ll have more pictures of gardens to post, and a few months they’ll have all kinds of delicious vegetables and herbs in them. Be well, y’all.