Allen's African Adventures: A Special Gift

After living in Africa for over seven years, we have gotten used to folks giving us different items as their way of saying thanks and expressing gratitude. Mostly, we are blessed with various fruits and vegetables from different people's gardens and homesteads. We have even been given a couple chickens along the way as well but they quickly become dinner for our family. Upon our recent return to Swaziland, the Khanada family from our Lesibovu Bible study and church expressed to Steve that they wanted to give our family a guinea fowl. They raise guinea fowls at their homestead. We were honored that they wanted to do this for our family as we know the Swazis work hard for what they do have at their different homes. However, we had to admit this was a new and special gift for us to receive this time.

Babe (Father) Khanada told Steve that he needed to have a cage or coop for the guinea fowl when we brought it home or it would fly away the first chance it could get away from us. This was news to us as we had always seen guinea fowl just running around, not flying. So, Steve took one morning last week to make a coop for the guinea fowl but knew it would be a temporary home. Steve and Lacie went to Lesibovu this past Saturday and was given our special gift and temporary pet for the kids, G the guinea fowl. She did OK on the 1.5 hour drive home to our house and Steve placed her in her temporary home. She spent a little while crying out but soon adjusted to her new surroundings. We gave her some food and water and said good night.

When we woke up the next morning, we now had TWO guinea fowls in our backyard. One was in the coop and one was on the outside. Our plan was not to start our own guinea fowl farm! :) G's new friend hung around the house for a couple days until Steve had the time to move G from her temporary home to our freezer for a future meal. As always, life is an adventure for our family!

G the guinea fowl and her new "friend" that showed up on Sunday morning