In a strange perversion of the natural order of things, the chicks are on the kitchen counter. Am I right? Isn’t that weird to say? “The chickens are on the counter.” Even if there are multiple dead, headless, featherless chicken carcasses, the remains of many chickens we would still say “The chicken is on the counter.”

Chicken meat is by far the most heavily consumed animal protein here, and chickens are one of the main pillars of the informal economy in Jamaica. Even in the formalized economy, there are tariffs and bans on the importation of chicken meat and parts to prevent the US and other much larger producers flood the Jamaican market with cheap foul to meet the constant demand for brownstew, curry and fried chicken.

In my community, and in hundreds of others across the island, many households have a chicken coop in the backyard and every few months raise a flock (pack? herd? gaggle?) of chickens to sell to markets, schools, and their neighbors. Women like my host mom scrap together enough money to buy a crate of chicks at the local feed store. The chicks arrive home, as they did today, in a large perforated cardboard box, and will be left to fend for themselves in the zinc shed behind the banana trees. Every week a taxi driver will be commissioned to haul up a bag of feed, and the chickens will chirp and peck and flutter and grow and get progressively uglier and decidedly less fuzzy.

Once they’ve reached the desired plumpness, the water is boiled and the machete is sharpened, and within an afternoon, the chest freezer in my kitchen is filled with naked pink loafs of meat. The butchering itself adds to the economic reach of the chicken, since various neighbors who are usually unemployed are pressed into service with the promise of receiving necks, feet, hearts, livers and whatever else is edible.

There may be no wrong way to eat a Reese’s, but there are only a few acceptable ways to eat chicken in Jamaica. No matter where you are, cook shops from St Elizabeth to Portland serve the same thing: Curry Chicken, Brownstew Chicken, Fry Chicken, Jerk Chicken, and Baked Chicken. No Coq-au-Vin here. No medallions of sage butter melting between two perfectly grilled Stadtler breasts, no siree. Just chicken foot soup (delicious if you avoid the actual feet, which have a strange gummy texture) and liver for breakfast.

Not all chickens are mercilessly beheaded, of course. Some are left to live out fairly useful lives as laying hens. My neighbor Miss Dimple sells eggs out of her kitchen, and all I have to do is corral a small child and pack them off with two bills and an egg crate.

Never let a Jamaican cook you eggs unless you no longer have need of arteries. I don’t know what eggs did to Jamaicans, but they are enjoying a terrible culinary revenge. Oil is poured with a heavy hand to begin with, and an egg here is not properly cooked until it has become a sodden sponge of protein and vegetable oil. I once tried to describe poaching an egg to Miss B, you know, with the boiling water, and spooning the white over the yolk. A poached egg. She looked at me as if I was crazy, and told me that the correct way to poach the egg was to pour extra oil into the pan and spoon the oil on top of the egg.
You’ll begin to appreciate why I insist on cooking my own breakfast.

For now, the chicks are peeping at the top of their tiny little yellow lungs, and hopping up and down in a futile attempt to escape their cardboard prison. Damn they’re cute. Maybe I should name them? Brownstew, Curry, Curry, Fried…