Full House; Life & Death

It's been about three weeks since I picked up Nepear's family - Melifa, Robert and Patience - from their village and brought them to the house. Travelling with us were five chickens, one cockerel, and an inordinate quantity of maize.

From left: Patience, Melifa and Robert at the house

After some initial teething problems (dogs chasing chickens; dogs chasing kids) everyone's settled in just fine. The kids and the dogs have adopted a policy of mutual distrust and the chickens have learnt that the safest place for them to be is in their pen. We had two escapees from the pen in the early days - the first (the cockerel) we managed to rescue from the dogs for the loss of just a few feathers; the second (Nepear's prize chicken) wasn't so fortunate, and met a grisly, puppy-related death. The chickens get 'yard break' for one hour a day, when we tie the dogs up and let the chickens wander around the garden eating insects and the like. We normally let them out at 5pm, because when the sun sets they helpfully round themselves up and troop back into the chicken hut.

Chickens 

Yard break

I've since bolstered the flock with four extra chickens, provided by Paddy, as part of his burgeoning village-to-city chicken import business - which involves sending his sister to his Mum's village to bring back live chickens to Lilongwe to sell at inflated city prices. He's used the proceeds to buy himself a radio, which he listens to the football on. The last of the four chickens was a gift to me from his Mum, so we've christened it Yona (Paddy's surname). The only other chicken to thus far acquire a name is 'Ebola' - who had the misfortune of falling ill with 'fowlpox', but seems to be recovering.

We've undertaken a chicken vaccine programme against 'Newcastle disease' - named after Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which suffered an outbreak in 1927. It's fatal (for chickens...) and has been doing the rounds, so we thought it best. The vaccine programme involved catching the chickens one-by-one, opening their mouths, and pouring two teaspoons of medicine down their throats. Some were more amenable to this than others.

I caught this chicken with my bare hands

The chicken hut now has all the mod-cons: wooden nest boxes filled with grass; bamboo perches; under-floor heating. It's been christened 'Sunbird Chicken', after Malawi's ubiquitous, state-owned 'Sunbird' hotel chain. The hard work has paid off and last week we were rewarded with our first - and thus far only - egg, which we have left in the nest in the hope that it will hatch.

Sunbird Chicken

The egg in Nepear's hand-made nest

Robert and Patience seem to be enjoying themselves. They like swinging in the hammock, playing football, and being squirted with the garden hose. They've started at a local pre-school, which they attend on weekday mornings. They don't speak much English, but Robert managed his alphabet today. On a Sunday night we try to all watch a DVD together - so far we've watched an episode of Frozen Planet, and an Episode of 'Tribe' with Bruce Parry (the one where he goes to Gabon, takes lots of hallucinogenic drugs and retches everywhere...Nepear's choice). Maybe next week we'll watch Toy Story.

Relaxing

School uniform

First day at school