Smart sports fans all over the world (one of my students):

Another student dressed up for dancing that took place every night for almost 2 weeks shortly after the new year.

(She also cooks for me once a week and makes a delicious peanut sauce.)

This week I decided to visit a neighboring village about 8 km from mine called Dorosiomasso with a friend of mine, Mikailou (in the picture with the chickens). So, we biked to the village on a basically non route that ran through a rough area of brush with basically no landmarks to know if you're heading in the right direction. It was an interesting ride, as he biked rather fast for an older man and I struggled to keep up with him. Anyway, when we finally arrived after about 35 minutes I was relieved. Upon arrival, we met up with a teacher from that village so that we could go visiting a bunch of people who live there. So, we started with one of the chiefs (this village actually has 3 it's so big), then went to several other families homes to say hello. At one home was the family of a couple of my students, so I talked to them for quite a while and of course we drank Dolo (locally made beer), and then they gave me a male chicken. All day basically everywhere we went my male friends drank liquor that was given to them by the families, so after stopping by several families in just a couple of hours, my hosts were getting rather liquroed up. So, we went on with our chicken in hand and continued promenading the village. When we got to the house of the second chief, we stayed for awhile, the guys drank some more liquor and dolo, and the chief gave me a second chicken, a female this time. So, I thought, great. I have 2 chickens, we can go back to village and make a feast for several people.

So, as sunset was approaching, I kept suggesting we get started on our way back, since neither of us had a light, the road back to village was actually a non-road, and my host to get back had become rather inebriated. But, the saying goodbye's took a long time, and by the time we actually mounted our bikes, each with a chicken hanging upside down by the handlebars of course, the sun was quickly approaching the horizon. 8 km really isn't that far on a bike, but with my guide in his state, crashing his bike twice in the first 10 minutes of riding, I could see that it was going to be a long ride. 15 minutes into the ride, the sun was gone and the light left over was fading, as the chickens banged their heads against the bike on the rough terrain. 20 minutes and it was dark; not much progress had been made. I pulled out my cell phone which has a small flashlight on it (and had only one bar of charge at the time) to help light the way, but that light is rather weak. So, after about 20 minutes, now in the moonless dark, my guide crashed a third time (the path was really rough), this time breaking the tie that held his chickens feet together on his bike, realeasing a squalking chicken into the wild. So, he got up from the ground and went after the chicken. After a minute I realized that if I wanted to get back on the road to get home, I would have to dismount my bike and help catch this chicken. But, catching chickens isn't something I have a great deal of experience with, so I wasn't much help at first. Persistance paid off as eventually we cornered the chicken in a tree and were able to trap him. Mikailou took him back to his bike, I went back to grab my bike with the other chicken, and then I suggested maybe we walk for awhile. So, we walked the rest of the way back to Satiri (my village). It took about 40 minutes of walking, miraculously my cell phone flashlight held out so we had a small light to help. We got on the wrong path once, but my guide quickly realized that it didn't look familiar. It all looked exactly the same to me, desertlike ground spotted with trees and shrubs- I wouldn't have been able to find my way back in broad daylight.

When we got back his wife had to waiting for us to eat. I said the next day she should help me prepare and cook the chickens, and they said no, I couldn't eat them. Since there is a male and a female, I have to raise them and have chicken babies. So, for the time being, my friend is keeping my chickens for me since I don't really have a place for them, and he keeps mentioning that "whenever you need your chickens just come by and get them."

And yes, my hair was braided in the chicken picture and yes, I'm aware of how ridiculous it looked. It took 2 women and a girl 3 hours to do it; yesterday it took me about 5 hours to undo the disaster.