Word verification free blog !

About a week ago a regular follower of my blog mentioned that she'd finally managed to comment after the fourth attempt. I'd just experienced the same problem on another blogger's post so I went into my settings and deactivated the word verification. I notice a little spam, but it is seperate form normal comments so I'm able to delete them. I hope all bloggers will follow suit and de-activate this irritating and frustrating feature that Blogger has deemed fit to add to our posts!

My blog is a word verification free blog!

Last week I made a trip to Shinyanga to buy fresh produce from the market. This town is a mere 30km from our camp and has three produce markets, various small shops opening up onto the street and two larger supermarkets.

Above is a typical street scene in Shinyanga with markets visible in the top two photos

Top left is a row of dukas (informal shops)  which open onto the street. Then you have a beauty salon, a motorcycle dealer and a general dealer

Last week I posted photos of the chickens, especially the handsome rooster in our garden. A few days later a hen emerged from the outhouse with nine chickens. The rooster is so proud of his offspring, is a hands-on father and can be seen strutting around the garden with mama-hen and babies.

The resident rooster in our garden shows his chickens how to scratch for food!

Meanwhile  at the Guest House I started feeding several chickens in a coop greens from the kitchen vegetables and bits of rice from the cooking pots . A few days later I went into the henhouse and saw a hen and very-newly hatched chicks inside the henhouse. The edge of the house was too high for the chickens to get out so mother hen was scratching in vain for food on the floor. I asked the gardener to bring me a cardboard box, placed the chickens inside (I counted ten) and managed to get the hen in with them and then closed the flaps. The gardener then carried the box carefully over to our house where we placed the [indignant] hen and terrified chickens in the outhouse to settle into their new surrounding. I gave them some maize mash and a shallow bowl of water. The hen concealed her babies under her belly for the rest of the day.

That evening when Edward, our askari /gate guard shooed the first hen into the outhouse, she immediately attacked the new hen.  Edward made a barricade between the two hens and soon they all settled down to sleep.

The new mother-hen and her young chicks enjoy the wide-open space of my garden

The next day, the original resident hen and her chickens made a dash for the garden while the new hen had a good look around  first before coaxing her chickens outside. Three days later I'm enjoying the original chicken family, with a dad and siblings from a previous batch of chickens,  and the single mum and her ten fluffy chickens.  Life is so much better in a lush garden to scratch for insects and juicy greenery.

The chicken run at the Guest House which I cleaned out with the help of gardener, Kedia and from where I rescued the white hen and her ten new chicks

When I returned to the cage above, I noticed that two more hens were sitting on more than a dozen eggs each. I removed most of them leaving each hen with only four eggs. My brother , Phillip suggested I do this. Apparently if you take away all the eggs, the hens would become depressed. Now there's a thought: post-natal depression in hens...

And then I just had to add another aaaaawwwwe factor to my post...

A little cat I came across in a shop in Shinyanga. And no, even though it was difficult to resist, I didn't bring it home!

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