Having taken our leave from the Paramount Chief and gotten back into our car, the matter of what to do with the two guinea fowl became a pressing one. The birds were in a panic in the boot of the 4×4, banging their heads and wings against the back seats, desperately trying to jump to the front of the car.
The boys were adamant that they wanted to keep them as pets. Our driver felt strongly that the chubby avians were too good to waste and that we should slaughter them and roast them for dinner.
We talked of finding a poor man or woman by the roadside and giving them the birds. Or of walking to the busy central market and offering them to one of the many beggars there. Or perhaps just release them in a patch of forest outside the town to “give them a chance” – though they would not have survived long in the wild. But none of those ideas could garner a consensus among us.
It is at that moment that a brilliant solution suddenly came up. Having decided to keep the birds for the night in our car while we looked for better ideas, the friendly security guard of the hotel where we were staying started to show an interest in their welfare. He built a small cardboard house for them to spend the night in and helped the boys catch the birds every time they escaped from the boot (which was quite often…).
The boys finally decided to entrust the pair of guinea fowl to him for safekeeping, under the condition that he would not to slaughter the royal birds until they had first given birth to chicks and raised them. This he did, taking an oath on the Koran under the watchful eye of four witnesses.
Thus was the saga of the Royal Guinea Fowl brought to a happy (or at least – less complicated) ending, albeit perhaps not that intended by the king of kings when he gave us the birds.
