His name is Rio and he pecks across the sand (queue ’Rio’ by DuranDuran)

So some of you may have seen this picture up on my instagram account....

He’s name is Rio and this is the story of how we ended up with a chicken.

Drew and I had arrived back into Chitima from a trip into the provincial capital a couple Saturdays back.  On our way walking back home from the market where the chappas drop you off, our friend/fellow professor, Armindo,  rolls up in his truck and asks where we are going. Us saying home he says to jump in.  Though we quickly realize he isn’t taking us back to the house.  He son, Iris, is in the backseat too and we all start heading in the opposite direction and stop at barraca on the outskirts of town and pick up the owner who is his buddy and he tells us we are going looking for alligators and elephants, with a chuckle.  Most of this day consists of a lot of poor understanding of Portuguese and just rolling with it, but I remember him saying alligators and elephants.
 Either way we are just pumped to be riding around in a car that isn’t trying to squeeze 20+ people in it.  We make a break out west of Chitima after picking up his friend.  Pass a couple mato (bush) villages and pull into the entrance of the road to Maringa Bay (where we went for New Year’s, older blog post).  We go down the road a bit and stop at a baobab tree and get out over looking this decent field with a small pond.  No animals around but they tells us this is where elephants come after the rain season, I’m picturing it being some sort of migration stop.  I can believe it, we are pretty out in the mato.  Though we only stop there for a hot minute and we are back in the car and off.  After we pass a few dried up rivers we make it to a rather good size town and stop at a road side baracca and have beer with the fellows Armindo knows sitting around on the patio.  After some short conversation and Armindo getting me to try this weird fruit in a shell that he says elephants love and then proceeds to dip it in charcoal ash (wasn’t bad),

(Tamarind Fruit)

he points out that the main guy we are talking with on the patio is the town’s chief or police, go figure.  But that he knows where there are alligators.
So we all pile back into his truck, which is now a party bus of sorts with the cab full and people now riding in the bed.  With the chief of police leading the way we turn of the main road and start tearing down this dirt cattle road that seems to just go la.  It opens up though into a beautiful field that kisses the water of the Lake Cahora Bassa.  We talk to some women washing clothes at the shore there for a minute and then we are off again following the chiefs directions he is shouting from the bed of the truck.  We come up to a gated area and it turns out to be a compound for kapenta fisherman on the lake.  There are huge rows of laterally hung black nets for drying out the little fish and even more piles of nets that are being repaired by teams of young men.  The chief gives the guy at the gat the secrete password, really just local language I can’t understand and we get out in the compound they start walking us around.  Fallowing the gatekeeper we make it to a group of men who are repairing a net, the young guys are untangling and retying the net will a older man watches over them.  We do the introductions and are talking with older man.  I ask him about some of the fish they get, specifically if Tiger Fish is one?  Which is the trophy fish people typically go for in this lake.  The conversation keeps going and I am looking around fascinated with everything; huge nets, their sleeping hut, cooking station, and chickens running around all in the same area.  The older fisherman sees me looking around and says something to me about piexe(fish) and galinhas(chickens).  I try and say something about them fishing for the chickens of the sea.  He and all the others seemed to find that quite funny.  He then turns to the net boys and says something in local lingua and in a hot second without me even understanding the context of what he might have said, the net boys drop what they are doing and start tearing after one of the roaming chickens, Rio.

Rio puts up a good show and has these boys running all over the compound for a while.  After a minute I realize that they are chasing it for us so I join in and the others seemed to find that absolutely hilarious too.  We get it cornered with their sleeping shack and a boys snatches Rio up.  Takes him to the older man and he just points to me.  Astonished a bit, thinking that they were going to want to cook him there to have dinner with us. Instead they were just being extremely kind and just gifting me a chicken.  Feeling very grateful and humbled I took Rio from the man and thanked him profusely.  After he said no problem I lifted him up and said I’m excited to have the fish of the land.   That corny line really got them going.
Though there wasn’t any crocodiles or elephants, we still ended up with a chicken.  Which we had to name Rio after getting him from fishermen on a river bed. Back home gitty with ourselves after recounting all the randomness and goofiness of what our afternoon that day had turned into, we proceed to take a few pictures with our new gift/pet/future dinner.

P.S. Rio is still alive to this post and he is roaming around our house with the other chickens.  We are waiting for him to get fatter and also a good occasion to have him for dinner.