My compassion for non-human animals took root late in my life long after I stopped working on a poultry farm on which I had grown up. It all started when a friend sent me a video showing the Taliban cutting off people’s heads. I was so disturbed that I asked my friend not to send me such videos. He replied “gwe nga osala bano” – which means “how come you also slaughter others?” I asked him “which others?” and he replied “chickens.” I dismissed his comment as laughable until one day when I was slaughtering a chicken, and, in the process of taking off their head, their blood spilt on my foot. At that moment I hoped that I would never die like that. And, suddenly, a statement made by the same friend who sent me the videos popped up in my head: “So you don’t want to die the way you kill chickens, but you are playing God by already killing living things the same way in which you don’t want to die.” I suddenly felt a connection between the taking of a chicken’s life and the taking of a human life. That was my last act of slaughter. However, I did not become vegan immediately as I continued to eat what others slaughtered. But I started making connections between animal products and suffering, I started valuing the lives of non-human animals as much as I valued humans. Since 2018 I have been living a vegan lifestyle and helping others develop empathy for and justice towards our non-human fellow inhabitants of this planet.
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