The other day Jodi and I woke up to find a whole heap of white feathers scattered around our yard. We did a head count of our bantams and it seems that one has been abducted (it was my favourite one too). We don’t know what type of animal could jump our fence, eat a whole bird and then jump back over the fence … we are still conducting enquiries but I think that they will come up null and void.
Our missing Bantam
Over the last few weeks we have been noticing a pretty yet many yellow bird weaving hanging nests on a tree outside our window. In the morning he would start … by the evening he was finished and by the following morning he would be starting another one and the first one had dropped to the ground. I felt sorry for this little fella as it seemed like they hadn’t contacted a good structural engineer to draw up the designs for his nest and they kept on falling down. It wasn’t until last weekend that a friend informed me that it wasn’t the engineers’ fault that the nests were falling down, nor was it the male birds fault that they were falling … actually it was his intended spouses’ fault that the nests would be constructed and then dropped. This poor male bird has to go out and find grass, and then spend countless hours weaving it together to create a lovely abode for him and is lady … but if the lady does not think that it is good enough OR large enough he has to start on another one. My heart bleeds for this poor innocent male bird that is doing his best for his lady which never seems to be good enough.
I was sitting in my office yesterday morning just about to blog a few stories and had a telephone message to get to Willow Park ASAP … they think that some chickens have been stolen. I jumped into the car and went out to investigate to find that 15 chickens in total had been stolen during the night. The thieves cut their way into the yards and then into the chicken coops … I can’t believe this … we started with 100 day old chickens … 61 died because of bad feed and now 15 have been stolen; this leaves us with 24 layers. All lessons learnt I know … but it is hard all the same.
I think one of the things that makes it worse is that some of the girls in Samkele thought they had heard a car during the night. It is one thing for locals to steal because they need food, but for someone to drive into Willow Park (who can afford a car and fuel) and to take the chickens is a whole different story … shame.
I am in the process of looking at the money made from the sales of our eggs to try to secure the chicken yards a lot more. We are hopefully going to make our coop doors more impenetrable by welding more bars onto them and making the door ways sturdier. I know that this will not ensure the chickens security, but at least it will be a bit more of a deterrent for would be criminals.
On Monday morning the YFC drive came back from Willow Park with extremely bad news. Over the weekend someone had broken into the teacher unit and stole a HUGE amount of items (blankets, selected clothes, 2 burner cooker, cooking equipment as well as their food and stationary for the Samkele girls). Thankfully the teachers were not there (they come back into Bulawayo over the weekend) and no one was injured.
I hang my head in shame for not blogging this earlier … but the other week there was a massive fire at Willow Park. Our workers did an absolutely fantastic job putting out the fire and it took them over 9 hours to contain it. I heard from my man on the ground that we had almost lost our chapel and our brand new dining hall, but thankfully they had been able to contain the fire … the only thing that did get damaged was a pipe leading the a septic tank, but it was all fixed by the end of the next day. This fire (even though it was hard to contain) was a benefit to Willow Park, we needed a lot of the grass that was burnt to be slashed (cut) anyway … so in theory it has saved our gardeners a lot of time because they no longer have to slash these areas.
We found out a couple of days ago from two sets of friends (who got stopped at two seperate police road blocks) that is an offence to drive a “dirty car”. How peculiar is that?? With the amount of cars that are driving around Bulawayo that are definitely not road worthy (even in a smash’m up derby) they choose to pick out people driving “dirty” cars and fine them … it is VERY peculiar indeed.
I have started to play golf with a few church friends on a Saturday morning (tee off is at 7am). Before packing the clubs into the car I thought I would take a quick wander outside just to see if anything else had gone missing from the night before (as stuff had gone missing the previous Friday night). I shouldn’t have been surprised … but even more stuff had gone missing … this time it was the last 2 of the old tires, two jerry cans full of petrol, two empty jerry cans as well as four 50kg bags of cement. This time we knew that this loot couldn’t have been thrown over the fence … I would pay a guy (or girl) a lot of money if they could through a 50 kg bag of cement over our security wall … it’s highly improbable if not impossible. This confirmed our suspicions that either our gardener was stealing this stuff or someone, some how had gotten their hands on our security gate key.
We questioned our gardener again and of course nothing was found out … we were at a loss. The whole weekend was on the internet trying to find out how to change our gate remote codes so that whoever was getting in (or out) could not do so again. It wasn’t until Wednesday afternoon that I could get someone out to teach me how to change the remote codes … so it is all changed now and we are eager to see if they come in again on the Friday to take more stuff.
A couple of days after we notice all of our stuff go missing we went over to our friends place with a load of other friends to all have dinner together and have a time to catch up. It was a great night of eating home made pizza’s as well as catching up with all of our friends and meeting a new couple who have just moved back up to Zim from South Africa. As both Jodi and I were fairly tired, we decided to call it a night early and were the first to leave and then various other couples left after us … it was after the last couple left our friends retired back into their house where they both started finishing their work on their computers. This is where the trouble began …
Not long after heading inside they heard their dog starting to bark … being a boisterous dog, they told it to be quiet. Then, with his back towards the door our friend heard a voice say calmly … “lay down on the sofa with your hands behind your back”. Without hesitation he followed the intruders’ instructions and they tied his hands up with a computer cable. They then found his wife and hustled her into the living room with the husband … an hour and a half later the armed bandits left with loads of stuff.
It is amazing to see this type of thing happen; these guys have a fully walled property as well as electric fence and gate … but these robbers broke part of their dura wall (thin cement wall) to get into the property.
The challenges started at the beginning of last week. We live in a VERY well secured property with a large stone wall; electric fence on top of the wall as well as a large electric gate (which is the only way into the property). As we felt secure in this “compound” we did not feel obliged to lock up all of our fuel jerry cans, bags of cement and various other nick nacks that we have accumulated over our time here in Zim which we stored under our opened thatched carport. We also had four spare tires and two flat trailer wheels sitting under this shelter as well.
It was on the weekend before last that both Jodi and I noticed various things not being where we saw them last … we both just put it down to our gardener putting them away. It wasn’t until the Tuesday that we put two and two together and realised that a whole heap of stuff was missing. As we totalled things up we found that 2 of the 4 spare wheels were nowhere to be found along with 2 metal jerry cans, 2 plastic jerry cans as well as the 2 wheels from the trailer. We also deduced it would have had to have happened on Friday night. We questioned our gardener and maid about these things but didn’t know anything about it.
We called the police and due to fuel shortages had to go pick them up from their station as well as drop them back off after their investigation. Of course nothing was uncovered and they left with the assumption that it was someone (I am thinking the bionic man) jumping over our HUGE electrified fence and then throwing all the items over and then, they themselves (using there bionic abilities) jumping back over the fence. We however thought that it was either an inside job or someone had taken a copy of our gate remote … VERY interesting.
I know that I haven’t blogged for the last week and a bit and I am sorry … it has been a rough couple of weeks with loads of “challenging” things happening. I will let you guys inside our lives over the next couple of days and fill you in on the things that have been happening.
Just click here to email us.
Do you want to recieve blog updates via email? Now you can, just click here.