November 3, 2008
By Esther Schaeffer
I left the annual women’s retreat at Ouessinville Sud Church in Bobo-Dioulasso and headed for my motorbike when several women gathered around to thank me. One of the women started the motorbike for me. Though I have ridden the motorbike for a number of years, I don’t use it enough to be very comfortable on it. Just keeping the heavy bike up is a challenge for me, especially as many of our roads are sandy. I got on, adjusted my heavy sack on my shoulder, and next thing I knew the women gifted me with two live chickens, tying the fowl to the handlebars.
The chickens were positioned in such a way that their heads were against my leg, and I quickly tried to remember if chickens bite. I have often seen people travelling with chickens tied to their bikes but never imagined I would be one of them. I bravely said thank you and headed off. When I entered the main thoroughfare, one of the chickens began to squawk and flutter and, in its excitement, managed to raise itself up onto the front of the bike. It stared me in the face with a somewhat angry expression. It was all I could do to keep the bike from falling, and I couldn’t imagine how to get that chicken back down to where it belonged.
So the rest of my ride home, I had one chicken squirming at my feet and the other trying to convince me that this was a bad way to transport chickens, as he kept a trained eye on me from his position on the front of the bike. But I had the last word with those two. They soon became our Sunday dinner.