Roosters & Kopi Luwak illustrated

The sound of the waves from the beach is amplified at night

 The sound of waves lapping gently on the shore lulled us to sleep. The pleasure of smelling the salty perfume of the ocean in that deep dream state one only achieves in the early morning hours was rudely and sharply overridden by that f*****g rooster!

Rooster on the beach is a normal sight

 It had chosen to stand directly under my window and proceeded to kykeli ky for the next three hours! Having only had a few hours sleep when it started crowing it was rapidly becoming in danger of being that evenings dinner. After a few hours of trying to ignore the bugger I decided it was pointless and got up to scoop the refreshingly cold water of the mandi over my face and body.

My mothers mandi with the green scoop

 As I stood on the concrete bathroom floor lathering the soap onto my skin a small scorpion ran across the floor. I grabbed a scoop full of water and flushed it down the drain and resolved not to mention it to the kids, I did want them to bathe in the near future. Later that day India found two more scorpions near her suitcase that required removal. Apparently the chickens eat them so we decided the rooster might be useful after all. A few days later everybody was in favor of eating the rooster, even India and she's vegetarian!

Mother hen with her chicks outside Lise's house

 Opening up the wooden louvred windows that faced the ocean I was greeted to the sight of three chickens roosting in the small tree outside. Stepping outside and rounding the corner of the house I came across a mother hen sitting with eight two day old chicks tucked under her wings. Mother and chicks were all a-flutter as I walked past up the stairs for my morning coffee. My mother had acquired at great expense to the management ($100 for a small bag) some Kopi Luwak for me, the civet cat poo coffee I spoke about in my my post titled  'Defaecated coffee anyone?' for anyone interested in the process. Faridah made me a cup of kopi biasa (normal coffee - which is coffee grinds that they have grown, harvested and roasted themselves) which I started to drink and found quite nice. Then she brought me a cup of the Kopi Luwak and after tasting it's velvety smoothness the normal coffee tasted incredibly bitter. Morning coffee was accompanied with persimmons, sau (a fruit with a pear-like texture) and papaya. Every time I eat papaya it reminds me of our friend in Perth Loren Adams. Loren had been in the SAS and during his interrogation resistance training he had been blindfolded for days sitting on a hard concrete floor and been forced to eat mashed up papaya whilst being told it was someone else's vomit. After that he couldn't even get close to the smell of a papaya without gagging. Over a lunch of grilled snapper, rice and pumpkin shoot leaves we listened to the Arab news, the Russian news and the Japanese news.

Massive satellites on every house in the village

  Being almost on the equator here, the huge satellite dishes on the houses here point almost straight up to receive signals from the satellites orbiting the globe. They pick up some 600 plus chanels, our favorite usually being the French film that's on at eight o'clock in the evening.

Torsten watching a French film on the tv at Lises

  Later in the day that bloody rooster just wandered merrily into the kitchen looking for somewhere nice to sit and Torsten had to chase him out. Apparently when they're about to lay their eggs the rooster and hen will walk around like a young married couple trying to find a spot that looks good to nest in. Quite frequently this turns out to be the top of the fridge or Lises armchair and they have to be unceremoniously evicted. Regarding the rooster, Lise explained that he crows at first light ( it's still bloody dark as far as I'm concerned!), and to announce both high tide and low tide, and also to chat to the other rooster across the road.

The injured rooster

 The next day we noticed that the rooster was having difficulty walking and spent most of his time sitting down on the ground. Faridah was hoping mad with one of the neighbours and this is the reason: Apparently said naughty rooster had been going down to check out the neighbours hens and the neighbour, spying him, went at him with a machete and hacked of his spurs and severed the tendons on the back of one his legs. Faridah found him (the rooster the is) trying to stagger back up to our place with blood running down his legs. I have a feeling he became one of our meals but it was never mentioned due to the sensitivity of the western children present.