Chapter five - Getting chased by fowls

I grew up on the land. Back then, land ownership was a sign of wealth. Everybody owned a piece of land, or wanted to own it.

Granny Avie had a quasi farm. On it, she raised, fowl, goats, pigs, dogs, cats and pigeons. She had a coal kiln where she baked wood into coals which she then used for cooking in her coal pot. She grew every vegetable: corn, peas, potatoes, tomatoes, edoes, beans and figs. She had banana trees, pommegranate, cherry, coconut, soursop, plum and guinip trees in her yard. There was nothing more delicious than cook-up rice with peas and fowl feet that was cooked on a coal pot, only to be followed up with a dessert of fresh fruits. In summer time, when school was out, we spent most days with her, at her place, growing vegetables, baking wood, and eating rice and fowl feet, then gorging ourselves on plums and soursop. Then we'd run around barefoot once the sun stopped blazing, playing various games with balls and sticks.

These were some hot days, burning hot, long and delightful. My cousins would come to the village from town to visit with us, and we all would compete for grannie Avie's attention and love. But it was no contest. Except for my older cousin, who actually lived with Granny Avie, nobody, not even my brother, could take my place in her esteem. She adored me and that's the end of the discussion.

I can't say the same for the animals. It is from then that I developed a fear of animals, even for fowls. Because they always seemed to have a thing against me, especially fowls with newly hatched chicken. I remember being chased across the yard by an angry fowl who thought I had come too close to her precious babies. I screamed and hollered as I raced to granny who was doubled up in stitches at my circumstance. She liked to tell that story of how I was chased by the angry fowl, or how I was butted by the angry goat, or one of those. I don't know what it was. But the animals never seemed to take very kindly to me at all and it was a running joke that I was terrified of animals. The human animals are particular vicious and I've always been wary of them. Maybe because I was a bully magnet from Kindergarten. To this day, I still don't know what to make of "animal" people.