Watching chickens

If I had known that chickens were going to be a life line for me, I would have named my blog Watching Chicken in Africa...hindsight!

I have chickens of my own now!















  I got my first egg the next morning, I poached and
ate it It tasted like VICTORY!


















Here are Marongu and Fumpa cutting the posts for the pen, since I can't. Women are not allowed to cut wood for any reason, or at least not get caught doing in.

 
My brothers built a pen for me. I used one of the reed mats I purchased on entry to use as a roof over part of it. I used mealy-meal sacks and bent sticks to make 3 little coops for them.
















 Fumpa in front of my house.

 

I had my friends come up with name for them.
Here is Beyoncé, she is the best egg layer, she lays 2 a day.

Here is Noodle, she had not laid any eggs yet. She may become chicken noodle soup!

 Here is Kululu (it's a name from an anime game and in Kahonde it means Rabbit, I like that)!
















Here is my family's rooster, I named him Thor. He really wants to get into my pen and take advantage of the new hens.

 Here are their nests. And of course, Krona had to check them all out and pick the best one.

They all try to get in the same nest instead of each one of them picking a different one and at night, they won't go in them, they just stand around and squawk, so I wait till it's dark and go put them in. 
We had a freak rain storm this week; I went out to check on the chickens, they were sitting on top of their nests instead of in them. My mom told me chickens were dumb, I just didn't know how dumb.

Chickens are very important here. My Mama's brother is in the hospital and my Tata had the boys catch one of their chickens for him to take to him. I'm not really sure if he was taking it to the hospital or to the family, but I guess a chicken can fix everything.





Rhoda fixed my  hair, it was so nice and so much cooler, but it only lasted about 2 days. sigh...

 

Here is Melda, she had to watch the goings on of the building. She is in her favorite dress, she has no idea it's a princess Halloween costume.

Here is Joseph, he was dancing and I tried to get that, but when I'd put the camera up, he's stop. He is potty training, so all he has on is that shirt. And by the way, stepping in baby poop in the grass is as bad if not worse than stepping in dog poop.











Here is a picture of a spider I had to kill with my frying pan, it even dented the pan. Well, okay, so the wall dented it, but it sounds more exciting to say it was the spider.

When taking to people here, if you tell them something they didn't know or are not sure that they believe, they say Sure?, but it sounds like SHORE-wa. It's a funny word to hear them say, I find myself using it often when taking back to them.



The rain storm this week was a very welcome change. It cooled off and rained all day. First rain we’ve had since the end of April. And of course all my electronics were dead or dying and I had no sun to charge them. I was not prepared. My poor Krona, hid under the bed and cried, she had never heard thunder or seen rain since she was born after the rains stopped. I talked to my Tata about the storm and would we have more, he said, no there would be no more, until October 24 & 25, it always rains those days then no more until December. I’m marking my calendar to see if he’s right.





Marongu also finished putting up new bricks around the bottom of  kasansa, (kitchen). It looks nice and I am enjoying cooking out there now that it is so hot.