Gallus Gallus Domesticus

One of the good things about living in Sierra Leone is that I can keep Chickens, something I am sure I would not be able to do living in a flat in London, without breaching my tenancy agreement anyway!

I started about two months ago with 1 cockerel, Buddy and 5 hens.  Then hens have no names, I was under strict instructions that the chickens are for eating so not to get too attached so they are nameless.  Our compound is perfect for keeping chickens, we have a large area at the back of the house for them to forage and as the compound is fenced people cannot steal them, as they would if they got half the chance!  We had a little chicken house made for them which they all go into of their own accord at 6.30pm every night.

Our little chicken colony has now expanded and until yesterday morning we had 22 chickens in total but unfortunately the hawk swooped down and stole one of the chicks!  We plan to make a trap to catch the hawk but judging by our failure to catch the ground pig I don't know how successful that will be.  Further I don't know what we would do with the hawk should we catch it.  Everyone here will say eat it, eat it, but it just wouldn't seem right. I suppose in the UK hawks and such birds of prey are so rare it would seem like a crime to eat one.  The other option would be to keep the bird as a pet, but even then tying up a bird feels so very wrong!

It is quite therapeutic to watch the chickens. They have very distinct personalities and you can really see where the expression 'pecking order' comes from. There is a definite hierarchy.

This is Buddy, our cockerel.  He is neurotic and you will often hear his high pitched warning calls which makes all the other chickens freeze, it's like chicken musical statues!

This is my least favorite hen, she has a hold over Buddy though, he loves her and follows her everywhere.  She even led them into the house the other day sqwarking and flapping their wings, Thea got very excited!  I have voted we eat her, she leads Buddy astray and is clearly at the top of the pecking order, she pecks at the other hens and chicks!

This is my favoruite hen, when we got the chickens this one wasn't old enough to lay but even up to today she hasn't!  I couldn't understand why, I asked Mama (Winston's mum) so she showed me. We caught the hen and on her back, near her tail she had a spike (sorry no photo) almost like a feather that didn't grow properly.  This had prevented Buddy from mounting her.  We removed the spike but it must have really put him off, he won't go near her.



This was the latest hen to lay, she hatched five but only has four, it was her chick that the hawk took.

These two hens came together and are very close, the white one has two chicks and the grey speckled hen has four.  They seem to help each other in looking after their chicks.  The grey one refused to sit on her egges once they had begun to hatch so Hadja (Winston's sister, who lives with us) put her under an upturned basket with the eggs, showed her the kitchen knife and told her in Mende (their Tribal language) that if she didn't sit on the eggs she would be killed with that knife and eaten, she put the knife next to the hen.  I don't know if these chickens understand Mende but the hen sat down on the eggs until they all hatched!

These are the teenagers, they make the most noise.  There are four cockerels and two hens, the children from the 'bad' hen.

I feed the chickens rice twice a day, anything left over is eaten by these lovely  and tiny little birds.  Hadja says she wishes she could catch them all - they come at least a hundred at a time - so she could roast them, she says they're very sweet! I say no!

Thea feeding the chickens.

We have great fun with the chickens and I have to admit that sometimes they keep me sane in this crazy place.  They help me keep perspective.

Driver Troubles

Right now we own two tipper trucks (1 Scania P93 1995 & 1 Scania P94c 2000 - for those who are interested) this is our business, we hire the trucks out to people doing construction work.  For convenience the trucks are named Benedict-George and Benedict-John i.e we need a tyre for Ben-John.....  Both tippers are currently hired by a South African company,  they are growing sugar to make bio-ethanol in Makeni, a town four hours north of where we live (controversial I know, but a country's got to create revenue where it can!)

I want to tell you about our drivers, this might seem benign but I can tell you straight off we have gone through six drivers in the last three months!  Now I debated over this but have decided to change their names - despite their criminality and the fact that there is very little likelyhood that they would use the internet / know I had written about them, fair's fair and you never know I might get sued.

I am told that Sierra Leone's first president said (my written Krio is not good) "which si u dae ti cow, na dae u de eat" this translates as "where you tie your cow is where you eat."  This means that you must get what you can by any means from the place where you work because that is where you make your living.  This makes legitimate sense if you have a farm in the bush, you must try to get what you can through your own hard work.  However, this small saying seems to have legitimised workplace pilfering and is the driver behind our big driver problem.

We started out with one truck and one driver 'James,' and before we had the tipper we had a box van which he had been driving and seemed to do a good job, also we felt we had an understanding that we would pay him well and as we expanded he would benefit i.e we would pay him more.  All was well until we found out about more and more incidents in which he had lied to get extra money from us.  Further, as we spoke about the new truck coming he began to shout the odds: "I want to drive the new truck, I want a louder horn on my truck, I will be the boss of all the drivers, you should fire who I say you should fire...it became clear that power was very important to James and after the straw broke the camel's back we fired him.  The next couple of days there was a tirade of people begging for us to give James his job back which was horrible but unfortunately we had decided and we didn't fire him lightly.  It is a strange part of the culture but people do things wrong and once it is done other people come and beg for them and they 'arrange' until the person is forgiven, rehired or reinstated.  Where I come from if you do wrong and you're fired unless you go to a tribunal that's it!

In the mean time we had got our second truck and found a driver for that (Ben) who still works for us and whilst he is a bit slow he has been more honest than any of the others - well at least we haven't caught him yet!  Anyway, we also found another driver for the P93 (or Ben-George), a Mr Smith, who was recommended to us by a cousin of Winston, whom we trust.  Mr Smith was a good driver, honest and hard working but he only lasted three days....James, thwarted at having lost his job went back to Makeni where the trucks were working and began to intimate that he had 'done something' to the truck (here this means that he has done some witch craft on the vehicle.)  Mr Smith was petrified, he called us as he was leaving to  return to his home in Freetown (about 4 hours away again) to tell us he couldn't work on that truck, that we might not be 'ordinary' (by this he means that we may have protected ourselves using witchcraft) but he was a soldier in the government forces during the war and he had seen what witch craft could do, and beseides he is 'ordinary'.  He said he was afraid for his life.  So, that was that!

James continued to threaten us indirectly and directly but neither of us have suffered any ill fate yet!

After much searching and many interviews we found another driver, Spencer, Winston found him to be very eager and he was keen to start straight away.  So off he went....after about two weeks the truck had had some shaft problems (for those who are alien to trucks this is a pole that attaches the axel to the gearbox on the undercarrier - or underneath the truck) which had been remedied with the purchase of a new one..grrr very expensive!  It was Spencer and his apprentices' job to make sure that the thing was on securely, something which they failed miserably to do because it fell off in the middle of a busy town called Masiaka. This not only damaged our new shaft but caused another car to have an accident and burst it's tyre!  Following this Spencer was seen in the town by someone to whom he owed some money, he was subsequently arrested and gave the keys of our truck to the police telling them that if they called his boss (us) we would pay the money to get our truck back!!!  Well the police then held our tipper to ransom..we managed to negotiate it back by give the guys wages for the month he had worked (this was about half of the owed money.)  I know, I know, it is absolutely outrageous that the police would hold our truck for someone elses debt!  I cannot tell you how many times I have wanted to tear out my hair at the injustice of situations like this but believe me there is no point....that is the way it is here and there is no point having a heart attack about it, the longer our tipper was off the road the more money we were losing.  So anyway, we got the keys back and the truck was back on the road afer some repairs.  Needless to say Spencer no longer had a job and it further transpired that he owed money to several people in the town where he was working.  He had also been plotting to steal fuel from the vehicle (the company using the tippers fuel them) someone that worked at the local petrol station came looking for him because he promised them 450 000 Leones worth of fuel, he took the money from them and obviously did not deliver!

Next was 'Henry' he only lasted a day, he was caught by one of the employees of the SA comapny with a hose and a funnel by the truck (a clear sign he was stealing fuel) and he was promptly arrested.

Now we have another driver who has not proven troublesome ...yet

 Thea, Benedict John and Me.

A Sad Story

No update on the Ground Pig yet, Abdul Rahman was decidedly absent at 'trap setting' time yesterday - although I am starting to doubt his ability to set the things correctly because each time he sets it the ground pig eats the cassava without setting off the trap!  If we ever catch the elusive monster I will be sure to post some photos.

I feel that I have had a very blessed life with very little tragedy, it was always very sad when a family pet died, but on a global scale I think I have been very sheltered from the storm and have a very different perspective to most people who live here.  This difference is one of the most difficult to overcome and apart from feeling sometimes guilty at how easy I have had it and at times a little silly, it has sometimes made me incredibly sad. 

During our first visit we travelled around in the beloved Defender to several villages to which Winston had affiliations, at each of these villages we would be given a live chicken as a blessing from either relatives or the village chief.  After sometime we had accumulated about three cockrels (they are always cockrels as not to take the egg layers!) tied in the back of the truck, we also had Mama and several brothers and sisters so the vehicle was pretty full.  It was blisteringly hot and as we were making the long drive home the chickens were making a real racket.  I was not dealing with it well, I felt incredibly sorry for these poor cockrels, I was thinking they had been in this hot truck all day with their wings tied and everytime they sqwarked someone would kick them to shut them up.  I began to get really upset and Winston had to stop the truck, everyone came down as I tearfully explained to Winston what my problem was.  Everyone, whilst trying to be sympathetic, was completely perplexed offering even, to kill the chickens now so they would stop making a noise.

In October 2008 when we had been here for about three weeks, I was sitting in Mama's compound with Winston's sisters when an earsplitting scream came from the next compound along.  Of course everyone else ran to see what the noise was all about, I, my English self, sat still not wanting to intrude into what was clearly a personal matter.  After a couple of minutes one of Winston's sisters came back explaining that a young girl's baby was choking, at this I ran to see if there was anything I could do, there were close to a hundred people crowding around the mother and child and I could not get anywhere near them.  After trying to get closer someone came running saying that they were a Community Support Officer (now here that is the term for a senior nurse) so I backed away and returned to Mama's house.  After about twenty minutes someone came to the compound and I asked them what had happened, they said that the CSO had told the girl to take the baby to the hospital after giving no first aid or attempt to clear the baby's airway.  Mama explained that the young mother had been weaning her three month old baby on something called pap (a cornmeal porrige) which involves using your hand as a funnel into the baby's mouth and pouring the pap in.  Inexperienced, the girl had not known when to stop, and the crying baby had inhaled the porrige leading to it choking.

It was 21st October 2008 and the baby died that day before he reached hospital. 

This is only one story and a demonstration of the difference between life in England and life in Sierra Leone, I cried because I thought that the chickens (that I later ate) were uncomfortable in the back of our truck, and this young mother's baby died because neither the mother or the local CSO (a senior nurse!) knew how to turn the baby up side down and hit him on the back, or CPR, something that at least 1 in 5 people in the UK know how to do.  When my daughter was about three months old I took a baby first aid course so I would be sure to know what to do if I should ever be in that position again.

Eleven years of war will certainly dampen a persons sensitivity to death but here there is so much more for people to contend with; illness, lack of medical facilities, lack of money, lack of basic education, dangerous vehicles, dangerous roads, the list is really endless.  Death is also encountered close up here, it happens in closed hospital rooms or closed houses it is a public affair.

My experience here has made me question myself and some of my attitudes, it is easy for me to have such a sensitivity towards the cockrels feelings because of two things I have not been exposed, throughout my life, to death 'close up' and I have never felt truly hungry.

Sorry for the sad story but I think that my blog should be a real account.

The Ground Pig - Part 1

I asked a few people what they thought of my new blog, the major feedback I got was good but the honest feedback I got was that and I quote (Deany) "It's a little bit too much love and not enough Tipper Trucks and Sierra Leone for me" I was also advised that people would want to know more about the day to day experience of living here, so here's the first installment of an unfinished story for you:

We keep chickens in our back garden,  we have 1 cockerel (Buddy), 5 hens who don't have names and 6 chicks.  Here  one of the challenges of keeping the chickens, apart from tolerating Buddy's incessant squawking (I thing he is a little neurotic!) is predators; we have a cat that ventures into the compound every now and again, there are several large hawks (I have no idea of the species but they are large and grey and I am yet to capture them on camera) and the dreaded ground pig!

SK is Winston's brother, he first told me about the Ground Pig (which is pronounced like you are saying it with an 'Allo Allo' French accent), it is basically a very large rat.  It lives in a burrow like a rabbit and is nocturnal so can often be heard stomping around the compound at night looking for food.  SK and Winston would tease me exaggerating the size and ferocity of the animal. Not that it had any effect, I have no fear of rats or mice or any small mammals but I was intrigued, I was determined to get a glimpse of the Ground Pig.

Now we got the chickens about a month ago, we converted an old pigeon house to serve as a chicken house so at night they are tucked up nice and safe and are not really in danger (unless I forget to close the house.)  We made a decision to catch the Ground Pig when our neighbour and helper Abdul Rahman (This is his full name and how everyone addresses him, not Abdul but Abdul Rahman, and the say it really fast so it actually sounds like Adama, which is a girl's name!) was digging a mound for me to plant my tomatoes, a Ground Pig ran out and escaped through a hole in the compound wall.  The neighbours killed it and there was a big hullabaloo because they were refusing to give any of the animal to Abdul Rahman as they themselves wanted to cook and eat it.  They agreed to once I spoke to them (as it is my compound and I am older than all of the people involved they were obliged to share the rat with Abdul Rahman if I asked them to.)

The following day Hadja (Winston's sister who lives with us and helps me survive here) told me that she had heard another Ground Pig during the night scampering around the rubbish heap.  Abdul Rahman went about digging up the animal's burrows trying to find and catch the thing.  He was just putting his arm right down the hole without any regard for his fingers.  I felt it was my duty to warn him about the risk of Rabies, Lassa Fever and any other rat related diseases and received a blank look and a chorus of laughter from both him and Hadja - I think that people here overcome so much that thinking about these relatively remote illnesses (compared to Typhoid, Malaria e.t.c) is just a waste of time to them.  Anyway he dug around the tomato patch to no avail, Plan B, the trap…..

He brought 2 lengths of thick bamboo, 4 thick twigs some string, a pointed metal rod and some cassava (a root vegetable popular in West Africa) for bait. He constructed the trap as demonstrated in the photos:

Abdul Rahman with the materials to make the Congomi trap

One of the flexible twigs is tied inside the bamboo and bent round to create the tension required to set the trap

The two finished traps.

Springing the trap in the evening (once the chickens are in bed so the trap doesn't catch them instead!

The sprung trap: the idea is that you put your bait inside the bamboo beyond the small vertical twig, where there are 2 holes with string coming out of the bamboo to the left of the twigs is a noose, the Ground Pig will, in theory, knock the twig and set off the trap, the small horizontal will be disturbed and the large bent twig will try to straighten and tighten the noose trapping the Ground Pig. 

 See the hole for the Ground Pig to enter.

Well, I woke this morning to find that our crafty Ground Pig friend has foiled our plans (or Abdul Rahman has not made/set the traps correctly) as all the cassava had been eaten but no Ground Pig...the saga continues!



How Did I Get Here...the history

I met Winston at the end of 2003.  After University I was working in a bar to 'top up' the meagre salary I was receiving from the bad, bad call centre job I was doing.  The bar was Po Na Na and I loved working there, they played good music, not just the Pop / 'R'nB' typical of most clubs in Manchester at the time and I really liked the people that I worked with.  Winston was a regular at the club and would come there and just dance, he knew all the staff and one day he asked my friend, whom had got me the job, to introduce us.  After some months of Winston staring at me at the end of the bar we began our love affair.   I love Winston's company, he is unlike anyone I had ever met, with an outlook on life I have never seen before or since, he radiates something inexplicable in any language.

In 2005 Winston and I decided to travel to his homeland, Sierra Leone.  Winston left the country in 1991 and had not see his mother since he was 16, a vicious war had ripped through the country and was just settling down .  My parents were understandably worried about our travel plans, I'm sure that most people that had any media exposure to what had happened would be if their youngest decided to trot off to a recently ceased conflict zone.  However they were supportive and mum, ever the nurse, advised me on jabs and Malaria.  That trip was emotional, we spent about three months here exploring the south of the country in our Land Rover Defender and with several of Winston's long lost brothers and sisters in tow.  Whilst exploring we had decided that we could think about living there for a while, we had big plans though, we were not looking at living a meagre existence in rural Sierra Leone, we wanted to help rebuild the country and set ourselves up for the future at the same time. 

A rice farm on the Mattru highway (Southern Sierra Leone), fenced to keep rodents from eating the crop.

Overlooking the Stadium in Freetown

Winston's beloved Defender.

The Sewa river which runs down to the south of the country.

Some locals in the Jong district offered to give us up to 200 acres of land which was stitting idle, to farm.  Here they were explaining the harvesting process.

Oh Dear!  Driving into a hidden gutter....and local farmers digging us back out again!

We did a LOT of research and found out that in the 1970's Sierra Leone had been exporting rice, now the country was importing 75% of its main staple food and some of that from the USA!  I was dumbfounded, one of the richest countries in the world selling rice to one of the poorest, perhaps this just highlights my economic naivety at the time!  So, we travelled around different rice farms to see what it would take, it turned out a lot!  With little to no infrastructure in the country at the time we would have needed an incredible amount of capital to set up this venture - no decent roads, no tractors, mills and there was just way too much global competition - Vietnam, Pakistan, USA and so on....  The idea was romantic but a little unrealistic.

We travelled back to the UK and began working in Manchester again, I in Social Housing, Winston in IT.  It was back to the grind but all the time we were discussing ideas and plans for our life in Sierra Leone.  We realised that in reality we needed to be on the ground if we were to get a proper idea of where good business opportunities were.  Winston came back in 2006 and spent 11 months here researching opportunities.  He came back to the UK and we set about saving enough money to set up a business in Sierra Leone.

In October 2008 we returned to Sierra Leone and here we are 1 daughter and two tipper trucks later trying to build up our small fleet....