Some things in Libya can be pretty hard to find: a good hamburger, a voltage adapter so I don't blow up another XBox, and a watch that isn't fake. One good thing about Libya, especially on April Fool's Day, is that a live chicken in a box isn't all that difficult to procure. The site office I work out of is closer to my villa than the main office most people work out of. This provides me the opportunity to get home about 15 minutes before my other housemates. 
The only difficult part was getting my driver to understand that I was looking for a live chicken, and not a bucket of drumsticks. After a brief stop at a fried chicken store, we made our way to the market. For 4 dinar it was pretty easy to pick up a full sized chicken from one of the farmers. I learned that the red chickens will lay eggs. I wasn't sure we'd keep Jamahariya the Chicken long enough to get eggs out of her, so I opted for a plain white fowl. I had to hide her in the corner of my office the rest of the day. She squawked a few times and scared a couple of people, but it was ok. After that it was just a matter of finding my cowboy hat, and leaving her on my friend's bed.
I had a hard time keeping a straight face when he got home. I had to walk off and head over to the tennis court early so I wouldn't give it away. After he got upstairs, he spent about ten minutes trying to figure out what he was going to do with the chicken. We bagan to worry about what revenge he might be plotting. I had made sure to lock my bedroom door so simply returning the favor wasn't an easy option for him. In the end, he was forced to concede defeat.
After the humor of the situation wore off, we were left with the quandary of what to do with a live chicken. We debated throwing her over the fence and into the farm nextdoor. Our houseboy was very ecstatic when he saw Jamahariya though. I think I heard him mention the word cookout.
No comments:
Post a Comment