Becoming a Chicken Mother

Liora McElvaney
Mar 16
5 min read

Hi everyone! It's been a long time with no blog which is definitely my bad, but also the fault of my lack of Wifi connection at site and busy, busy weekends. I’ve started writing this multiple times, but each time it’s been deleted because once I connect to Wifi the page reverts to what was there before, which is something Kevin wrote, and it is not appropriate for my blog! So, technically, I’m typing this in my notes app and plan to copy and paste it once I’m back in the city.

Hi I'm back in the city now at a cafe and am trying to diligently post this - my motivation is self-discipline and my mom constantly telling me that she needs another blog post. So much has happened in the past 9 weeks that it's a little crazy to write it all out, and, seriously, it’s been some of the craziest, longest two months for MULTIPLE reasons, and it’s proven to be revelatory.

I’d be remiss not to at least briefly touch on how the current political environment has impacted our work here, but let’s not forget that anything I post on this blog are my thoughts and not a reflection of Peace Corps. Anyways, immediately after the inauguration, our funding was paused. What this means is that we aren’t allowed to move forward and/or begin (in my case) grant-related projects. Things have been rocky and less structured because of this, which is saying a lot in a rather unstructured position, such as, I make my own schedule, etc.. Additionally, our trainings have also been paused or postponed, which was really devastating since it was going to be our first opportunity to see each other after not having done so for three months. But! the staff here worked really hard, and our delayed training was really only pushed a week and we were all able to meet up in Morogoro for Early Service Training - EST - part 1! Hopefully we’ll have a part 2 in the next couple of months where we can bring counterparts (Tanzanians who we work closely with). I got back from said training a week ago. Before that, my months had been filled with playing with the kids, riding my new bike, meeting more people, dancing at the club in Dodoma (omg text me for this story) and planting some trees!

Planting a Baobab Tree at my government office!

Swimming at the winery for Madeline's birthday!

Visitng the primary school for environment club!

My biggest and most favorite update is the fact that I got CHICKENS!! One morning, I went walking with a Mama in my village to check on the ten homes that have milking goats in my community, and when we were at one of the houses, I saw a chicken coop! I thought, "I can totally do that!" and, so, thanks to my strong relationship with my fundi (carpenter), I called him and told him I'd like to build a chicken coop with him. He came over and we wrote out the materials I would need and the cost, and the next day, we built it!

I then stated talking to my agricuturae officer, another person I have a strong relationship with, and was asking what types of chickens would be the best and if I would really need a rooster, since I was scared of being woken up at the crack of dawn (everyone in the village said YES you HAVE to have a rooster or the hens won't lay eggs??!!). Kindly, he offered to sell me three of his chickens for a HOT deal at 10,000 tsh a piece, which is about $4 a chicken. Yes, I got a rooster, and surprisingly, no, he has not been waking me up! His name is Boss and the hens I've named Chippy and Punghati Kuchanya which means Saba Juu, or 7up (yes, like the soda) in Kigogo, the local language.

Now, my chickens have begun to lay eggs! To put it in perspective, since eggs are a hot topic back in America right now, to feed my chickens costs ~3,000 tsh/ wee,k and soon I’ll be getting 2 eggs/day or 14/week. One egg in the village costs 500 tsh so a dozen would be about 6,000 tsh, which is $2.40, but I’m receiving 7,000 tsh worth and therefore turning a 4,000 profit! Not too bad. Once my supply is more consistent, I’ll start gifting my eggs to friends and neighbors in the village!

Having them gives me something to look forward to (eggs!) and is something sweet to fill my time. My mom has always talked about wanting chickens back home, and now I'm learning how to do it here! And one cay, I can totally see myself having some in Americ,a too.

Okay this was kind of crazy. Before EST, Kevin, Alex, Charlie, and I decided to take a quick 3-day trip to Zanzibar, which is the beautiful island off the coast of mainland Tanzania. It was completely Kevin’s idea to go and, amazingly, he convinced the rest of us! It was short since we had to get to training, but it also didn’t take too long because we have an AMAZING high-speed train here in Dodoma. We caught the train, said hello to staff at the Peace Corps office in Dar, then got the ferry to Zanzibar.

While we were there, we ate really good food and laughed a lot and swam and even got to snorkel (thank you Mom!)! We saw lots of angel fish, parrot fish, and even a starfish and an eel! Then we swam some more and Charlie even found this really cool wooden sailboat that we got to go on for our last night.

Zanzibar was interesting since where we were was very tourist heavy, speaking swahili was shocking to the locals and also was a good conversation starter. I think we’ll definitely be back at LEAST one more time!

Walking around Stone Town - Freddie Mercury was born here!

On the snorkeling boat! We were the only 4 on it!

I already talked a little about training, it was filled with long days and even longer nights, but I definitely think I got some good resources to take back to site with me. ALSO! I was elected onto the Service Improvement Committee with two other volunteers (Alex and Megan!). We’ll still have to see what my role looks like, but for now I’ll get to travel to Dar even more because we have quarterly meetings there!

After training, we decided to take the late train home and go on a waterfall hike. I did NOT want to go AT ALL but mustered up the strength and energy and was, like with most things, glad I did it. I think we’ll go back and do it again when we’re in Moro next.