Lost Chicken

Somehow, I ended up buying a chicken on a recent field trip, whilst accompanying some German Funders to meet a Federation of women, which CEASOP helped to establish (the first one set up in Uganda to support women self-help groups in the area). The plan was to buy for the school so that they could provide me with nice eggs but also generate income for the school. A man tried to sell me one which created a lot of discussion amongst the women as my chicken was passed around whilst they checked the weight to decide whether the man was trying to rip me off or not. In the end they decided that I was not to buy the chicken, but soon after the man lowered the price so we took it home with us. The idea was to take it straight to the school but as it was late when we got back (some terrible roads on the way) I realised that somehow I was going to have to take the chicken home with me on my piki piki (motorbike). Thankfully, my colleagues could see that I wasn’t very comfortable with the idea of riding with a live chicken tied upside down on my handlebars so they took pity on me and followed me home with it. Of course I hadn’t had time to go buying food for the chicken so after consulting google to see which of the foods in my house I could give the chicken I decided on a menu of tomato, pumpkin and apple (it seemed to especially like the tomato). My colleague was horrified that I fed the chicken some apple and insisted next time I give her the apple rather than the chicken. Next morning I was woken nice an early by my new personal alarm clock with a very loud cock-a-doodle-doo as it strutted its stuff around my compound. It was the next morning when I realised that something was wrong when I woke up naturally – only to discover that my chicken had escaped! I had a search party out looking for my chicken but sadly he was nowhere to be found. Next time I have the bright idea to buy chickens - they are going straight to the school!