Chicken first aid

Last night, after three months in Africa, I used my first aid kit for the first time. Not for my benefit, I should hasten to add, but for the benefit of one of my chicks who had somehow managed to break its leg.

We spotted it hopping around the pen on Saturday night and on closer examination discovered it had broken its upper leg bone. Two match sticks and a bit of surgical tape later and it looks like its received some first-class NHS care.

It's still hopping around, but hopefully in a couple of weeks the bone will have repaired itself and it'll be right as rain. Apart from the hopping, it's doing just fine.

Before - feeling unhappy

After - still feeling unhappy but now with bandage

Showing off the new bandage

Tales from the farm

It's been a busy few weeks on the 'farm'. Our first clutch of chicks hatched, so now we have ten balls of fluff bouncing around the chicken pen. Momma Chicken managed to hatch 10 out of 12 eggs, which is pretty good going in my book. Another of the chickens is currently sitting on 18(!) eggs, so we're expecting our second clutch to hatch in about ten days. We're now at the stage of collecting eggs for eating, so I'm looking forward to my first home-grown scrambled egg on toast any day now.

In the end, we named the sow 'Strawberry', which isn't quite as Shakespearean as I had initially intended, but it seems to fit. She's having a great time. Currently we're testing out which leaves she likes to eat; so far: pumpkin, soy bean, potato YES; cow pea NO.

As we're keen to get some piglets, we've been on the hunt for a temporary boyfriend for Strawberry. We managed to track a suitable one down in a nearby village yesterday, and we've now hired him for the week at a cost of £6. Upon delivery of a healthy litter of piglets, a further £10 will be paid. I've called him Roy.

Roy's definitely keen on Strawberry, who is playing hard to get. Strawberry is also bigger than Roy, which complicates matters. To stop Strawberry running away we may have to shut them in their little house and let nature take its course over an intense - and no doubt rewarding - couple of days.

Roy 

Strawberry left, Roy right

Roy (back) and Strawberry in a quieter moment

We're still expanded the space for vegetable growing in the garden, and have planted a number of new crops in recents weeks, including watermelon; cassava; sweet potato; and fish bean - which, ground-up and mixed with water, can be used as an organic pesticide. We've harvested our first crop of white beans and in the new year I'm hoping to start using our produce for cooking and preserving.

Oh, and we've acquired a 'top-bar' beehive...

Putting up the beehive

Sport, sport, sport

Last weekend was packed with high-octane sporting endeavour. First up was a football match between a motley crew of 'diplomats' (including yours truly) and ageing representatives from the Malawi Defence Force (MDF). The match was organised by the British High Commission to commemorate the various football matches played between warring British and German troops one-hundred years ago, on Christmas 1914.

The match was played at 'Silver Stadium' - home to Malawi's premier football team, 'The Silver Strikers' - before the final Super League game of the season. All money raised from the game went to support Malawi's war veterans - three of whom attended as guests of honour.

One of Malawi's few surviving veterans of the Second World War at the game. Photo' courtesy of Jenny McNee

A combination of the recruitment of ringers - including Paddy, who played most of the game at the centre of midfield - and the stringent conditions placed on the MDF team (e.g. no under-40s allowed), resulted in a memorable 3-1 win for the diplomats. We even made our way onto the back pages of the national newspaper in an article which began:

"A football team of diplomats accredited to Malawi whacked a Malawi Defence Force (MDF) team 3-1 in a war veterans fundraising football match at Silver Stadium in Lilongwe on Saturday."

The first five minutes of the game were designated 'symbolic' and all the heads of the various diplomatic missions in Malawi made an appearance on the field. The results were amusing; here are my nominations for best faller-overer (photo's courtesy of Jenny McNee):

And my personal favourite...

As if that weren't enough, straight after the football match I took part in a rugby grudge match between Lilongwe and Blantyre rugby clubs. It was the first time in four years that the only two senior rugby teams Malawi had played a 15-a-side game, so everyone was pretty psyched up. It was also the first time I'd played rugby since 2003, when I was involved in a turgid 13-13 draw at Vicarage Road against Watford Grammar School. The end result was a 21-7 win to Blantyre, after a hard-fought forwards dominated game. More games are scheduled for the new year, so watch this space...

Me pictured cuddling another man. Nothing wrong with that. Photo credit: Joe Wilkinson

Smiles all round post-game. I'm third from left on the front row. Photo credit: Joe Wilkinson

New Arrivals

It's been a week of new arrivals. On Wednesday, having journeyed across the Mediterranean Sea, through the Suez Canal, down the east coast of Africa, and overland from Mozambique, my pick-up truck arrived in a shipping container at a railway siding on the outskirts of Lilongwe. The turning circle's terrible and it accelerates like a tractor, but it's got a thing that tells you what gradient you're driving on and it'll comfortably accommodate seven sacks of gaga and a fully-grown sow.

Which is just as well, because yesterday I purchased a pig: a one-year old sow. Nepear finished building the pig pen a week ago, so when I heard that Noah's sister-in-law's brother's cousin had a pig for sale in a nearby village, we jumped in the truck and went to investigate. After a brief negotiation we settled on a price of £60. It took six men to load her into the back of the truck - after they'd wrestled her to the ground and tied her legs together.

She's settling well into her new home and has already twice knocked over her water bucket to make a nice muddy wallow for cooling down. We haven't settled on a name yet, but 'Ophelia' - Hamlet's on/off girlfriend - is an early contender.

The plan is to hire a gigolo boar to do the dirty, and then wait for some piglets to appear. If all goes well, I should be able to eat a home-grown bacon sarnie in a year or so.

One of my chickens has now been sitting on a clutch of twelve eggs for almost three weeks, so I'm expecting the appearance of some fluffy chicks any day now...pictures to follow.

Reversing the truck out of the shipping container

A pig in muck