“Children, it's time to go,” my mother called out as she packed bananas and mangoes to take to the fields. Ndeke, my five-year-old niece and play-mate, winked at me.
It was planting season in Zambia. Everybody went to their fields at crack of dawn and returned at sun-set.
“We aren't coming,” I said, looking at a rooster fluffing its feathers nearby. “We'll be fine with Manyani around.”
“But…but he's just a bird,” Mother corrected me. “Will he take care of you?”
“He will.”
Manyani was bigger than any other rooster in our village. As a seven year old, I saw Manyani as bigger than a lion. He had established his pecking order by fighting other roosters, and winning. His spurs were long, and sharp, but natural; not sharpened or artificially fitted with razor-sharp steel blades as is done to roosters in countries where cock-fighting is regarded as a sport.
Manyani was brave and intelligent. When hawks hovered above, Manyani gathered his charge - hens and chicks - and herded them to safety under granaries that sat on stilts. When eagles attacked the flock, Manyani gave them a good fight and always won. I witnessed one pitched battle with a bald eagle. The eagle flew away claws empty, its white-feathered neck gleaming red with blood.
Other predators: pythons, kalugongwa, and wild cats, met similar fate; Manyani fought them bravely and won! After a successful defense, Manyani loudly let out his cock-a-doodle-doo, and paced around, wings flung open like a landing jumbo jet.
But to us children and my father, Manyani was friendly, tame, and even meek. My niece and I called him our “babysitter.” We fed him shelled maize and sorghum, and in the evenings headed him to the elevated hen-house. My father so liked the rooster he named him Nkum'manyani, meaning, I know your tricks; an oblique warning to people who plotted to overthrow my father as village headman. Manyani seemed to know how he was perceived and lived that image.
My mother was not convinced until she saw Manyani fight a thirty-foot python that was stalking my niece and me as we played behind our hut. Still shaking she told my father, “It's unbelievable but true. I saw the cowardly serpent meander away defeated; dragging its empty stomach and a body bearing deep wounds!”
Next time my niece and I asked to remain with Manyani, my mother was quick to say, “As you please!”
Good things are not forever. Neither was Manyani. My niece and I didn't know he was aging. His great muscles in his powerful legs and wings were not quite what they had been. Soon we noticed he couldn't climb the short step-ladder to the hen-house. So, everyday at sun-set, my niece and me helped him up. One day we were late. Manyani tried to climb the step-ladder...fell…and… We found him unconscious at the foot of the ladder, his head immersed in froth that flowed from his mouth. He never recovered. My niece and I cried uncontrollably. My father did not utter a word. My mother mourned, “We've lost a defender.”
Before night fell, word passed from one neighbor to another throughout the village: “Did you hear Manyani is dead!”
Among the senga, rooster meat is a delicacy and is served especially at family feasts. But no one ate the “protector.” Instead, I dug a grave under a muzumba tree and children of the village gave Manyani a solemn funeral.
Sidebar: Is Cockfighting a Sport?
In Africa, more particularly in Zambia, roosters fight instantaneously and naturally. They fight when a rooster enters a new flock of chickens (this is supposed to be a welcoming greeting!), and when a young rooster crows for the first time. In both instances, the purpose of fight is to establish a pecking order. African children love to watch cockfighting which takes place in open and natural environments. But adults don't even take notice of cockfighting because it is not accepted as a sport.
In societies where cockfighting is organized (legally or illegally) as a sport, the cocks are:
- Placed in a pit to fight;
- Their natural spurs are sawed off and replaced with razor-sharp steel blades;
- Given drugs to make them more aggressive and harder to kill; and
- Spectators bet large sums of money on the outcome.
Many societies see cockfighting as a cruel sport because 1/3 to ½ are killed on a typical tournament and both winners and losers suffer severe injuries. Animal rights groups such as the US Humane Society are against the sport because it “entertains through the suffering and death of animals.” In the United States of America, cockfighting is illegal in all the states except Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
