Chicken vaccination

Today we offered a free chicken vaccination to the locals to prevent their animals from being infected with Newcastle, a fatal disease that spread around recently. Charles, our neighbour and employee recently lost all of his chicken to this disease. The treatment costs only 20’000 Shillings for one thousand chicken but the locals would not even spend that little money to protect their animals even though a chicken’s value is around 15’000 – 20’000 Shillings. People don’t even think about doing it even to protect other animals, they simply just take things somehow as is.

Well, we announced the free vaccination last Thursday when our shop was open. We also informed the local chairman and the committee so they would help spread the word.

Saturday, 09:30 a.m. we opened the shop and prepared it for the treatment of the chicken. Then we got a call from our veteritarian who told us that he had one of his tyres blew so he would come a little later than expected. We also received a call from Dennis who informed us that he got Malaria.

 

As always if there’s something going on somewhere some locals would come to satisfy their curiosity. Same things for the kids who watched us from a distance. Even though I’ve already stayed in town for two weeks, the locals would still be amazed wherever I showed up. As if they’d never seen any white guy in their lifes. Some would even run away from me!

 

Then our vet arrived with the vaccines and prepared himself for the procedure.

 

Soon the first chicken were brought to the shop. As it rained the day before the farmers would send their kids to bring the chicken so the farmers could work on their fields.

 

 

Then the vaccination started…

 

 

In the meantime more and more children came to our place curiously wanting to know what was going on. I would take pictures of them and show them the result which amused them very much.

 

One of the kids then brought a football made of rubber, rope and a plastic bag. He just finished it while the vaccination procedure was performed. Fancy a football game?

  

The football was surprisingly nice to play and almost perfectly round! I played a little with the kids and took lots of pictures. One of the kids (kid on the right) then offered to sing a song and dance. But not before he went home to put on some new clothes! :-) After 20 minutes or so he came back for his perfomance. He was doing great and so he earned a big round of applause.

At around 4 p.m. the vet had to leave. We had treated around 230 chicken during the day. Taken the weather into consideration that was not so bad for the first time. We plan to organize more vaccinations on a regular base in the future.

I was the last one who left so I closed the shop and walked back home. On my way I met some of the kids who were around all day…

   

I had a lot of fun playing with the kids and some locals. That was truly a very very good day.