A few days ago, upon my return from Chipata after an enjoyable and enthusiastically inspiring meeting about an upcoming boys camp that I will be taking part in April, I arrived to what would be another 'lowest-of-the-low' kind of days. Its seems that all of my arrivals from out of village trips seem to be disasters. On more then one occasion I have come home to find pigs in my yard consuming all of my new sprouts from the garden that I have been working quite yard in. On one occasion, my garden had become completely decimated by their insatiable apatite and the hard work that I had done had become in vain. Since then coming home has always been suspenseful.
Since it was the eve of Fat Tuesday the night before, I decided to indulge in some grown up activities that I don't take part in whilst in the village. I was rather tired and hung over from all the activities and travel that my plan was to come home, unpack, and retire early.
I remember holding my breath as soon as I was dropped of from a hitch into my village. Curious as to what kind of tragedy I was about to embark upon such as a pig breach, my cat getting into food she shouldn't, or the rain springing another leak above my bed. Only time would tell.
Lucky enough, everything seemed to be O.K., which warranted a relieving sigh of relief. The fence was in tact, my cat hadn't caused and mischief and nothing was stolen. I began unpacking and decompressing.
I was laying in bed for what seemed to be like an hour. It had started to lightly rain and progressively worsen not long after I got to my village. The soft sound of the rain on top of my thatch roof with the combination of my exhaustion was enough to quickly put me into a sleeping spell; not quite awake, but not quite asleep.
Sometime shortly after that hour long doze, I began to hear something unusual. I was quite use to the consistent pecking of my turkeys beaks upon the plastic feeder buckets in which I feed them sunflower cake, corn and ga-ga (corn shells), and I had been hearing that sound, I remember, along with the rain, as I began to fall asleep. But the sound of the turkeys feeding changed. Instead of the consistent pattern of taping that I always here, the sound was much more violent and aggressive sounding. Not long after, I began hearing the turkeys let out their panic/danger calls that they make when something is threatening them (usually when a dog or animal is right outside their pen).
I begin to stir and make an effort to investigate, against my bodies will. Still drunk with sleep I open my front door to witness hell broken loose in my yard.
Inside the pen I see the cause of the unfamiliar noise being made, which was a giant pig, the size of Beethoven (the dog) having its way with the turkey feeder bucket. In the garden were my turkeys, who escaped from the enormous hole made by the pig, eating my sweet potatoes that had recently revived after their last overtaking, along with 3 other piglets chowing down.
The cause of all this calamity; On two sides of my yard the fences had collapsed, letting in every pig in the village. It seemed the culprit this time was the rain and termites which are in high abundance in my area.
Wanting nothing more then to close the door and pretend the whole ordeal wasn't in fact happening, I gathered my old ax handle and began to diagnose which issued was the most pressing. Because I had the giant 'beast of a pig' cornered in the turkey pin, I decided to deal with him first, and because I needed to vent some much needed aggression. To my dismay, this proved to be a poor decision.
Pigs have terrible vision, and despite my efforts and opening the door of the pen so the pig could escape, it insisted on trying to escape by running headlong into the chicken wire; over and over and over again, reducing the integrity of the pen to shambles. Despite my efforts and severe beats that I administered to the pig, it did little in knocking any sense into it. Seeing that this was taking more time then I had expected, I decided to abandon my efforts and try and salvage what was left of my poor devoured garden. I successfully chased away the pigs that had been feasting, but the turkeys lingered after I tried to get them away. I needed help.
I returned to the turkey pin and finally got the pig out, finding that many of the village kids had thrown rocks at it in an effort to help me as they could tell I was in distress. The pig escaped wounded, bloody, and hopefully traumatized at the experience of being beaten to a pulp and of being a target for E-way rock throwing.
When the dust had finally cleared and I had claimed my yard back from the village elements I was left with a bare garden, a severely damaged turkey pin, and about 30 ft of fence that had keeled over.
It was getting dark, and I knew that I had to work fast if I was to get the fence rebuilt while I would see without my headlamp. I called my counter part and closest friend in the village by phone but couldn't reach them. I began to pace, think and brainstorm of what my plan of action should be. The fence was much to heavy to pick up and put in place even for temporary purposes, and I didn't even know how to build, or repair a 'Zambian' fence, in which the soccer team had originally built. A hoard of E-ways (children) ranging in age of 10-14 were all staring upon me while I was debating the matter not but 20 feet away.
I decided to work fast, and try and rebuild the fence by myself, even if it took me all night not wishing to sacrifice anymore of the growth my garden had put forth. I was convinced it was going to be a long night, and upset at the fact that my counterpart and friend was nowhere to be found. I began to work in anger. As I began taking apart my fence, bit by bit, I noticed that a few of the kids, namely 2 of my young neighbors; Martin (10ish), and Jr. (11ish). Were looking upon me out of pity. They asked if they could help.
At first I was in such a rage that I dismissed them, not rudely, just passively. But after a bit of logical thought after I had calmed myself, I accepted knowing that I needed all the help I could get. They immediately motioned to some of the others, and before I knew it, I had 5, then 10, then 15 and soon 17 kids helping me to repair my fence. It became a little factory line, and everyone knew what exactly to do and how to go about doing it.
At first I was the ring leader to the entire project, but after they began asking for rope and digging tools, I quickly became the supplier and worked at just getting them what they needed. I became the errand boy.
We worked for 3 hours; first re securing all the posts, then fastening on the side beams (actually branches) and the administering the grass. I was amazed at their skill, knowledge and fairly cooperative teamwork through the whole process (though there was quarreling). What would have taken me up until the wee hours of morning ended up taking a little over three hours with all of the help I had received.
I gracefully thanked everyone of the children and felt awful that I hadn't any candy to reward them, but promised them that when I did, that I would treat them.
Though the fence wasn't the most appealing to look at and did need some tweaking the following few days I couldn't help but be utterly amazed at the willingness and generosity that was bestowed upon me by what I thought would be children too young to help. They had been my knight in shinning armor and came to my rescue in my darkest hour.
The next day my counterpart showed up and I told him what had happened He apologized laughed and told me that village life is a very hard life and kids learn these skills at a young age. Embarrassed I tried to recall what I was doing around age 10 and if I was capable of building a 30 foot fence with friends in a matter of 3 hours. At that age I couldn't do much except for get to the last level of Mario bros., and building a fence would be out of the question.
From that day forth, I have never underestimated the power of E-ways and their ability to get things done. Makes me wonder who will be teaching who when I have my camp in April. Ill keep an open mind.
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