Why did the chicken cross the road?

Today was one of our teacher’s pre-weddings. A pre-wedding is not a wedding rehearsal, reflecting upon it now as I sit at home looking at my empty wallet, the best way I can describe it is an exercise in getting as much money as you can out of everyone there (especially the foreigners).

So after lunch, together with our 4 Swedish guests, we made are way to the end of the school track to catch a mutatu into Murang’a. One came fairly promptly and we all piled in for the 15-20 min ride into town.

At the first stop a drunken man got on carrying a chicken in a plastic bag (insert you own gags here). “Habari yako Matthew” … although I couldn’t place him, he clearly recognised me. We exchanged some friendly but unintelligible gobbledegook and then he promptly fell asleep on my shoulder. The chicken meanwhile sat calmly on his lap with his head poking out of the bag suspiciously eyeing his surrounding passengers.

Imagine my surprise then when we got to Murang’a and the drunken man & the chicken crossed the road and accompanied us the short distance to St. James’ primary school where the pre-wedding occasion was taking place. Even more was my surprise when the drunken man deposited the chicken in the corner of the classroom then promptly withdrew. Shortly after I remembered him as one of the guys currently working on the new boys’ dormitory. Best not tell the Bishop & Mama as drunkenness is more than his jobs worth I fear!

For those of you unfamiliar with a pre-wedding agenda, it can be more or less summarised like this:
. Sing
. Pray
. Speeches
. Tea
. Sing
. Pray
. Speeches
. Tea

At this point guests are invited to make donations to help towards the happy couple’s wedding. This was not unbeknown to us as we had been briefed in advance by colleagues at the school. So one by one we all filed by dropping our cash in the box.
Once everyone had paid their respects and money, the master of ceremonies announced the main and for us unexpected event in the proceedings; an auction … and the prize lot? ... You’ve guessed it, the CHICKEN!

I had to have him. So I started the bidding at KES300 (about £3). And that’s where the bidding finished and how I came to be the proud owner of a chicken. Other products where auctioned: sweet potatoes, arrow roots, mangos etc, but I paid little attention as I acquainted myself with my Trevor.

After another round of tea, the final period was a bit of a free for all. People could pay to hear other people sing or not sing. People could pay to tell a story or a poem. Then the whole thing degraded into a farce with people being fined for anything and nothing. I was fined KES50 for making noise. I was then fined another KES50 for clapping. The icing on the cake was when the assembled guests were informed that the tea and biscuits we had previously consumed were also KES50, and all remaining biscuits were KES10 each. But I couldn’t really care as I had a chicken.

Et voila…Trevor took the bus with us back the way he had come and we released him to join the other chickens in the coop. I haven’t yet decided whether to ask Mama to cook him this week. What do you think?