10 April 2008

Mares eat goats and lambs eat goats

Long time no blog as they say.

Well. What has happened in the past few years I've been in Zambia? First to expound on the issues raised in my last post.

One day Joshua was walking to school with their white (good, wise) rooster bound at the feet. I asked him what he was doing and he said that they were selling their rooster to "Ba Head" (the principal) to pay for school fees or books or something. I said I'd pay him 5 pin if they sold the "headless" (evil, ugly, defeathered) rooster instead. We went back to their Insaka to discuss the matter with the great patriarch Iron Mumba. After much confused broken Bemba and incomprehensible gesturing, Joshua and I made Ba Iron understand that I wanted them to sell the other rooster and that I would even be willing to give them our beautiful rooster as a gift as incentive (better than 5 pin for them and us, as our rooster was one of those delightfully chronologically-defective individuals who begin crowing at 4 or 5 am, and roosters cost like 20 pin). Most of their misunderstanding stemmed from the fact that Carrie and I are known to desire our hens to produce eggs. Rural Zambians are convinced that a rooster is necessary for the hens to lay. So why would we give away our rooster if we wanted eggs (they failed to think about the fact that our houses are definitely within rooster walking distance, and that we had eggs before we bought the rooster). How they explain why women menstruate even without having constant sex is unknown. Anyway, they finally sold the terrible rooster at the road (Ba Head didn't want it) and now have our rooster and the white rooster.

Post script to this drama is that I had taught our now ex-rooster my chicken call (a whistling pattern) and so he comes over and steals food whenever I try to round up our hens to eat. He's a pretty bad rooster, he fails to mate with our hens most of the time because he runs after them really slowly, gives up early, and doesn't understand how to trick them.

We didn't eat the last batch of eggs from our 3 laying hens and have allowed New Chicken to sit on them (~15 days out of 21 so far). Candled the eggs to see the embryos. It was pretty cool. They are sort of swimming around in the eggs. New Chicken attacks the cats viciously whenever she is off of her nest for exercise or to eat.

She nearly killed the kitten (who I have yet to mention in depth). He either had a heart attack, a stroke, an seizure or something like that. He was unhurt from the attack, but started pawing at his head and then stopped breathing and went completely limp and unresponsive. I pinched him as hard as I could and he didn't move. I gave him CPR and he came back to life after the first breath into him. Scary as I had a puppy die on me a month before that in the same manner.

We had a puppy for less than a week. One night we heard this terrible yowling outside the hut and I found a miserable looking tiny puppy with hair gone from his forehead, congenitally in-turned front paws and several bot flies and infected bot fly exit wounds. We put him in the insaka with some water and decided to take care of him if he was still there the next day. He was. Pulled out 6 or so huge bot fly larvae, gave him a bath, put on antibacterial gel, and force-fed him reconstituted milk. He wandered around a little, usually just to leave his clean bed of straw and lie in the dirt. We asked around to see if someone lost a dog (figuring it wandered off and had a terrible time in the forest), only to find out that this kid has ukuposa'ed (thrown out, as in garbage) the dog because he said it looks bad. Ok it did look bad. Especially when he brought over its brother who was easily 2/3x as big and healthy and bright-eyed. Obviously ours was a runt that maybe the mother rejected. The kid tried to sell us the healthy dog offering to hit ours over the head with a hoe (why didn't they do that in the first place? why cast it out to die a slow and painful death?). It only strengthened my resolve to make our dog healthy. Not that we particularly wanted a dog, but we couldn't just abandon it. It seemed to be getting better until one day it got really bloated with diarrhea. It became less and less responsive and iridescent flies started laying eggs on its posterior (carrion flies I believe). After washing off the eggs it was in terrible shape and eventually quit breathing and went limp. I was pretty upset about it, and Carrie had gone to Serenje so it was especially hard to bear alone. I buried it between two old Cassava heaps in the backyard under moonlight.

Boy that's f-ing depressing huh.

So when Carrie and I were in Serenje last we were in "Tusheni's Grand Bazaar" and we saw these kittens creeping around. Carrie fell in love with the long haired one and I agreed it was pretty cute. I'm sure she gave a lengthy description in her blog if you want to read about the kitten. We named him Finnegan, though we usually refer to him as "Little Cat/Kit/Kits", which I imagine will actually become his name as per New Chicken's example. He is pretty damn cute, but looks terrible when wet. He is always climbing up us, uselessly attacking the other cat Professor and bounding about like a kitten.

After the first colony of bees absconded, we heard of another swarm near school. We put it in our hive (only 3 stings for me) and put on paperclips to keep the queen inside. Of course she needs to mate to get the colony going so we had to take them off eventually. A few days after that the new colony absconded. Sigh. They built a tiny 2x2" section of comb before they left. At least they contemplated staying. Swarming season is over so now we may resort to kidnapping a colony which has already established itself in a dead tree (our neighbor has offered to open the hive up for 3 pin).

Went to Livingstone (Zambian side of Victoria Falls). The ride there was terrible, as the road is in extreme disrepair and we took one of the smaller busses to save ourselves 10 pin or something. Ended up taking 2x as long as it should have. The guesthouse (Jollyboys) was delightful and cheap. Even offered a free ride to the falls. We went there and hiked all the hell around it. Of course it was rainy season and we didn't realize that the volume of water going over the falls is so great at this time that the mist actually obscured about 3/4s of the falls. Silly us. It was still gorgeous and awesome (as in inspiring awe). We saw it from the side, the top, and the gorge at the bottom where the river executes a nearly 180 degree turn (called the Boiling Point, due to the madly roiling nature of the water movement. There was a big log stuck in the whirlpool just going around and around for who knows how long. We had to hike through a flooded path and ate some wild dates to get to it). At the top about 10 feet from where the water actually falls over the cliff I first stuck my leg in and then (much to Carrie's dismay and anxiety) my whole body from the stomach down while holding onto a tree branch (don't have a heart attack Mom, I think there were some rocks I might have been able to grab onto had I slipped off the limb). I just let my lower half be bobbed around by the current. Fun! Dangerous! Carrie took pictures! We got soaking wet hiking beside the falls. It was fun.

Then we went to get some souvenirs! Can't tell what they are since some will be presents. Took a long time. Those guys are hucksters of course. "What kind of wood is this carved out of?" - "Mukwa" (I've cut down mukwa trees and it didn't look anything like it). After we were on the minibus back from the falls to Livingstone, I realized that the light weight and lack of coldness indicated that some of our items were carved from wood with lots of paint instead of the "river rock" that lines the river gorge. Damn. Oh well. Some stuff is pretty sweet. Carrie kept trying to get close to this olive baboon that was eating trash at the falls. It was so tame. She almost touched it practically.

Half the garden beds are functional. One whole row of stawberries, 8 tomato plants, maybe 10 green bean plants. In the field our watermelon plants are finally making watermelons and a discarded watermelon and tomato seed in the compost grew and are very productive (though I think the neighbors/chickens are getting most of the tomatoes). Had to repair the grass garden fence, which partially collapsed during the rains. Rainy season is basically over. Beginning cold season. My favorite.

Oh god, I am supposed to pick up Carrie and my's visas for our upcoming trip to Tanzania at 2 so I can't finish this blog. It's already 3. Maybe I will be able to get back to the internet after I retrieve the visas. We are going to Zanzibar island - spice and cultural mixing pot of the ancient world! in Junish.

Sorry I never have enough time to post!!! I even am staying an extra day in Lusaka and I still am running short on time. All bureaucracy takes longer than one thinks of course.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Whoa kid Yinz said a mouthful! Let's hear about that Sandsabar place when you get back. Gathering things for a package.