Chickenville

I've never been to a real farm. At least, not that I can actually remember. I'm talking Western farms here. Everywhere in Nigeria is a farm, practically speaking. If you walk the five minutes from here to the hospital proper, all within our walled compound, you'll pass a dozen or more little plots of land. People grow all sorts of things, from corn to cocoyams. Everyone has a plot of land--or finds one--to plant something or other.

And I've been to a farm in Thailand, actually. I don't remember much about it, but my teammates and I took a bus with our Thai friend Bii out to a farm in the countryside surrounding the town where we taught English. It was a sweltering, humid day (like most we experienced in Thailand that summer), and it was a fair walk from the roadside bus stop out to the chicken farm. We passed an old abandoned temple with a crematorium attached. *shudder* And I remember seeing the hundreds and hundreds of chickens in their warehouse-like building. But I don't do well in heat, and I sat on the porch of Bii's relative's house, sipping a cold drink, while the others went gallavanting. When we returned to the States and went through customs, we admitted we'd been on a farm, so they had to check our shoes for bacteria or whatever it is they check for! And that made us almost miss our coonnecting flight...

Farms...

But I can easily imagine what it sounds like on a farm. Oh yes. This morning, the rooster woke me up at about 6:15. This isn't particularly unusual. If you know anything about roosters, you know that all those storybooks you read as a child are lying, and that roosters crow anytime they darn well please. I'm used to roosters. But for some reason, this morning I couldn't get back to sleep. I told David if I had a shotgun, I'd go put the rooster out of his misery! He just kept carrying on and carrying on. I wanted to throttle him! He'd crow, and then a raspy crow would respond from a rooster elsewhere on the compound. It went on like this for at least a half hour before I fell asleep again. David and I joked that this part of our compound has become the chickens' quarters. "Chickenville," we finally decided to call it.

And then there's the goats. Our neighbour keeps goats. Again, it's like farms here on the compound. Most people keep some sort of animal, especially chickens or goats. David noted that our neighbour's herd is really growing quickly--with lots of new kids within the last few weeks--and that soon she'll find raising goats more profitable than working at the hospital!

So although I haven't ever been to a farm in the American sense of the word, I don't think I'm missing a whole lot!