A few weeks ago, I had a moment where I went, “This would only happen in Cameroon…” before I thought, “Okay, I’m sure it could happen in a million places, just not where I’m from.”

At Dr. Ellen’s suggestion, I started holding computer class for interested nurses at our hospital, after the workday is over. Since it’s so hot, I was taking a nap before heading back to the hospital. I got woken up by my dog, McLovin, barking loudly, and I also heard a chicken flapping around. I don’t own chickens, but I thought that the chicken sounded like it was inside my compound. I went outside to look. Somehow, a chicken had managed to get over the 6 foot walls that surround my house, and my dog was wildly chasing after it in my yard.

I figured that I had to get the chicken to its rightful owner before McLovin ate it. So, I spent the next several minutes chasing after the lost chicken – it tried to hide under the wheelbarrow in one corner of my compound, then ran to another corner of my compound and hid under some bushes. Finally, I managed to grab it tightly with two hands. I then somehow managed to unlock the padlock to the door of my compound, and I went next door to my neighbor, Dorothee, figuring that it must be hers since I spend a lot of my spare time there and always see their chickens around.

When I stood in the doorway and asked Dorothee if the chicken was hers, she told me to move over a bit and hold it out so that she could see it more clearly in the light. She looked at it for a moment, then said, “No, it’s not mine.” I was really thrown off that I just cracked up – because 1) that I assumed that it was hers and 2) that she would recognize her chickens by how it looks – then I just felt really ignorant. Of course people know what their own chickens look like, since they’re expensive to buy and to raise. It’d be like someone bringing me a random dog and asking me, “Hey, is this McLovin’?” Sometimes, I just feel so ridiculous.

Anyway, Dorothee told me that I could just let the chicken out on the street, and it’d know to go back home, like the other animals in Kolofata. I decided to just take the chicken to the house behind Dorothee’s (and diagonal to mine). They also told me that it wasn’t theirs.  Finally, my other next-door-neighbor told me that the chicken did indeed belong to them and that they were just about to go look for it. Success!