Chicken Deliveries

Going to Assomada

So this was the big week for delivering the first 187 chickens to their new homes. The logistics have been incredible, lots of details and personnel, and of course birds and trucks, all to be managed. We got 61 delivered here in Praia Tuesday evening.  It was exciting getting the birds into the covered truck. Then six stops around Praia.  What we learned was, move FAST because the truck gets hot when it is stopped.  In Portuguese galinhas are hens and frango is cooked chicken . . . . .a stopped truck turns galinhas into frango so Keep Moving!

Manuel Helping Load Chickens into Truck

then Saturday afternoon we loaded 126 birds into the back of a truck, using feed bags to space them out and keep them from smothering each other.  We moved quickly, there were four of us.  I stayed in the back of the truck as we loaded, working to keep the hens calm.  Finally we are loaded and we head to Assomada-- about 40 km over mostly mountainous roads.  Things seem to go well.  We have been blessed with a cool day-- a heavenly miracle, because we need cool to keep the birds alive.  And the wind in the truck helps.  

Pushing the Truck to the Gas Pump

About 10 km from Assomada we begin to head up an incline into switchbacks on the mountain.  The truck, which we are following in our missionary car, sputters and dies.  It sputters and dies again. They are stopped on the road ahead of us. The driver gets out and smiles at us . . . . they are out of gas.

I am certain this is a death sentence for our birds.  It's over.  But, truly miraculously, we are able to back the truck down the hill 100 yards and into a small bar/gas station that we had not noticed.  I help push the truck to the pump because Elder Biven is on the phone with the man in Assomada who will show us how to get to the houses. We purchase gas.  It takes WAY TOO LONG.  We need to get MOVING.  I can't get into the truck to check on them because the cover is tied closed.  We need to get MOVING.

Finally we are back on the road.  We go to the first house and and I get into the back of the truck and start working with the birds.  I pull them apart, they are hot and exhausted and three are dead.  But I put 21 in baskets for delivery to the first house and I work with them, I talk to them, I keep them off each other, I hold them on my lap and I sit in the back of the truck for the next five stops.  And at each stop I send the most exhausted ones to their new homes while Elder Biven works with the new owners to get the birds safely settled.  He quickly fills the water feeders we have provided with vitamin enriched water.  The hens perk up when they are out of the truck and in their new place.

Preparing to Put chickens in Coop

And at the last stop I perk up too.  An older woman, dressed in traditional black clothing,  comes to the back of the truck and thanks me for the chickens.  I get out with the very last basket of birds and follow a narrow walkway to the back of the house where the coop is.  Six younger children are in the coop, happy and excited.  Elder Biven is showing the oldest girl, who is perhaps ten, how to feed the birds with the feed that he and Paolo had delivered the day before (on a major expedition).  It is all worth it. To see the happy children so delighted about their galinhas.