This isn’t the first time that we’ve covered this cultural pastime in Iriba, but this occasion was a little bit different than the last, as there are not four walls to help with the process.  Our landlord and his wife invited us out to their garden just a few miles outside of town earlier this year.  We went and picked lots of tomatoes and some veggies with them.

The kids enjoyed playing with the little lambs and following them around.

As the sun was setting and the afternoon came to an end, Mohamad and his wife gave the kids a wonderful surprise.  They told them they would give them one chicken as a gift, but they must help him catch it.

Now, there’s actually a trick to this (or so we learned as we watched Mohamad).  Chadians flail out their arms in either direction to catch the chicken’s eye and stop his movement.  They work to corral the chicken towards a thorn patch, which the chicken thinks will be a safe place to hide.  In the end, it actually winds up being his place of entrapment.  Watch a 50 year-old “get after it” and show us how it’s done:

Here are the boys with Mohamad and their trophy.

Later, Evangeline’s friend Zanouba helped her pluck the chicken and clean it so we could enjoy some good chicken meat :-)