By JUSTUS NWAKANMA
You have heard it told to the slothful, go to the ant and learn how to be wise. If meekness must overcome worry they tell us, then we should frolic and rollick, caper and cavort like the sheep.
If predicaments envelop our firmament like dark clouds and we need an inspiration to keep going, they teach us to spoon and cuddle like the cat or spawn and swim like the salmon. Or still,if we must grow rich and get motivated, we can devour the works of Norman Vincent Pearle or Stephen Covey or Dale Carnegie, or better, read the hilarious notes of Robert Mugabe on African native wisdom.
Nobody has ever told us to go to a chicken to learn of any virtue. What is there to learn from the flotsam and jetsam of the society, who, like Solomon Grundy, the fabled zombie supervillain, is born on Monday. Denied motherly care on Tuesday. Nurtured on Wednesday. Raped on Thursday. Forced to lay eggs on Friday. Slaughtered for dinner on Saturday. Thanksgiving offered over her death on Sunday. Obviously, there is nothing ennobling in her life that anybody can emulate.
But somewhere in Azerbaijan – of all places – this chick decided to prove that what we set as standards for emulation may after all be a travesty of foibles. Often times the nuggets of life are hidden in the dark vignettes of irrelevance.
Somewhere in an open coop in Azerbaijan, a brood of chicks is chuckling and clucking. The day is bright and fair. There is no mother in sight. Father probably has gone away on another sexual escapade. All that the lazy cockerel does is to lay the hen, then wanders off for another sexual tourism or stay behind to fight off a sexual predator.
At the background, all we hear around this flock of yellow chicks, probably not more than a week old, is the clutter-clatter sound of hunger and loneliness. Then comes the intruder: a brownish hen with unkempt, ugly plumage. Kuukuukuuu…kaakaka…kukuuuuuuuuu…she bellows. Her mission is not known. By colour and by size, she is a total stranger in the pen.
She hesitates a moment. Surveys the environment with a prideful arrogance. Nobody pays her any attention. About 10 chicks in the coop look up. One after the other, they take a passing glance at her. Then they continue their business as if nothing has entered.
But there is one that is not pleased. He confronts the hen as she picks some pebbles from the floor. He stands in her front, speaking in mystified tongues. Quikikikikiki…kwakwakikiki…rarararararaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
The stranger looks up, then sniggers in gibberish disdain as if asking: ‘who the hell is this, where is this one coming from?’
A moment of introspection. Silence. The hen or the chick would have remembered the fabled battle of the tunnel between the feather-weight spider and the pound-for-pound crab. How the crab sauntered in majestic superciliousness into the tunnel, the territory of the black widow.
The black widow asked the crab why he should so brazenly walk into her territory without the meekest of courtesies. The crab, a reddish offspring of the Sahara breed, told the spider how he survived the hotness of the desert, swam across River Nile and River Zambezi, and how a little widow, who could not save her husband from being killed has no powers to cut short his adventures. Of course, the battle ended when the spider weaved a thick silvery web in which she invited the crab to lay on, insisting that it was her custom to make beds for heroes and guests like the crab who had come to keep her company
In size, the hen is probably ten times the size of the chick. One of her wings when scaled, would weigh fives times the weight of the chick. She snorts and continues picking food.
Kikikikikikikikikikikikikiik…the chick looks his challenger straight in the face. As the hen bends to pick more food, he thrusts his tender peak in her neck. Startled, the hen descends on the chick. One,two, three thrusts. The force throws the chick off balance, in between the legs of his conqueror.
He struggles to regain balance. Once on his feet, he attacks the hen again and again. The fighting becomes ferocious. A momentary victory for the hen. The chick walks away, about two feet from the hen. The intruder savours her pyrrhic victory. Everybody thinks the battle is over, with a victor and a vanquished.
As sudden takes the trial, the chick in a fit of rage and the aggression of a prisoner who has just regained his freedom, launches a second round of vicious attack on the hen.
She never expects this. And although she tries to fight back, the little chick would no longer give up. He keeps fighting, jumping and kicking. Completely decimated and thoroughly overwhelmed, the hen runs under a table and takes refuge. The Azerbaijan chick runs after her, kicking and jumping and fighting. The hen lets out a loud giggle of pain: Kwa…Kwa…Kwa. Injured and beaten, she runs away.
The chick watches the hen completely leave the terrain and now satisfied, returns to coop, triumphant but not celebrated.
It is difficult to tell, from where this chick gathered the inspiration and courage to confront the enemy even in the face of obvious disadvantages. Some say its the way of all cockerels and that by their attitude, the morning shows the day. But how do I know, when looking at his vent, whether he is a rooster or a pullet?
Whichever way, there are obvious lessons or proverbs that my lovely Azerbaijani chick had taught me.
One, that we should not be dissuaded or dismayed by the size of the problems that confront us. Looking at the hen approach the roost, looking at her size, and looking at the size of the chick, it is unimaginable that a midget would ever wish to confront a giant in a battle. But with the outcome, it is right to say that size is merely a perception. Oh, that’s right. I remember a story my friend told me, how each time he smokes marijuana everything before him becomes reduced in size. A giant of a man could turn into a midget; a three storey building becomes a mere bungalow before his eyes and if he wanted a fight whenever he is “on”, he could bring down that giant of a man with a swing of the arm.
Thanks, my dear chick. I have resolved after watching your epic battle, never to be weighed down by the size of a problem. It is merely in our thinking.
I have also learnt from you that if we must succeed, we should take the lead. When the intruder strayed into the coop, everybody else looked up and continued with whatever they were doing. When you approached her, help never came from any of your siblings. While the battle lasted, they never offered to help.Leadership is earned not a birthright. Any leadership that is conferred and not earned is defective and may not last. You proved that when you didn’t wait for any help.
Honestly, you amazed me with your deeper understanding of responsibility and authority. When we act in a responsible manner it always brings positive results, leading to more success in life.
You proved this saying right. That “change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.”
Often times, the insults, failures, disgrace we have faced in life is because we permitted them.
I recall a day, my dear Azerbaijani chick, how my sisters neighbour use to terrorise her and the children. Picking quarrels at random. Each evening, he would leave his flat only to pick quarrels, with my sister, her husband and children. My in-law, with his self acclaimed pious Puritanism, would tell everybody to ignore him. The threat became unbearable, until one day, he beat my in-law black and blue. I regret now that I didn’t confront him, because some months later when he wanted to replicate his wickedness on another neighbour, a boy, barely my age at that time, launched at him with a baton. We thought the man would have the little boy for a meat. But No! He ended up in the hospital. And our neighborhood had peace for several years thereafter.
I must commend you for teaching me that the strength of the weapon is in the heart of the handler. Having been only a week old, nobody expected your tender peak to engage in a battle with a mature enemy, bigger in size with a stronger peak. I now realise that a weapon is strong, only when the heart of the user is strong. Now I realise why sometimes when I watch movies, I see a man holding only a knife defeat a warrior who is holding an Ak47.
I have also learnt from you, the importance of changing tactics. A paradigm shift. Often, we are fixated, rooted to the same spot. We keep doing things over and over again without achieving any result. Look at my country Nigeria, she keeps employing a certain economic pattern for long and instead of moving forward she is languishing in the inchoative barber’s syndrome: all motion, no movement.
With your victory, you proved that when certain actions we take in life do not produce the desired results, it becomes imperative that we become more flexible and dynamic in our approach. You see, when you lost the first round of fight, you left the battle line. We saw the intruder relax. We thought you had given up; we never knew you wanted to change your tactics. When you now reduced the second round of attacks, you took her by surprise. I think, that aided your victory. Paradigm shift, change of tactics. Do not be ossified. Life itself is dynamic and the living like the masquerade, must keep changing his dance steps. Oh, thanks for this great lesson.
You also proved to me that we should not limit our capabilities. Like Bruce Lee will caution, If we always put limit on everything we do, physical or anything else. It will spread into our work and into our life. There are no limits. “There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”
Let me confess to you. Do you know that most of the time, I set limits, encumbrances and thorns on the road to my success? Each time I want to begin a new project, I will always tell myself: who cares about what you want to do? I become the initiator and the judge at once. And I have never judged myself fairly. I always score myself zero percent and of course, that will be the end of they project. On a hindsight, I now know I shouldn’t have erected those road blocks on my way to success. I assure you, from today, after watching you confront the unwanted guest without setting any limitation for yourself, I have resolved to remove whatever barrier that may stand between me and greatness.
Let others be my judge. If they judge me fairly, I will spread my wings and flutter like a happy butterfly. If they judge me wrongly, I will gather up and shoot at the sky again. I will keep soldiering on. I will keep fighting. I will keep trying.
Above everything, I suppose one of the greatest lessons I have learnt is the use of talents God has deposited in us. There are some men who are endowed with strength and power as you. But rather than use it for the the benefit of their family, they turn their wives and children into a punching bag. There are some who are lucky and talented in creating wealth. But it would amaze you that their wives and children are in perpetual denial. You used your talent well, to protect your siblings and your environment.
I have decided to Honour your heroics with a book: “Complete Guide to the Psychology of Chickens.” It will be an inquest into how you and your inmates live the life you live, knowing that you are only groomed to be slaughtered one day and used as meat for dinner.
Permit me to share your wonderful story with readers @: https://www.facebook.com/bizimyolinfo/videos/1009817162418223/
Someday, I will visit you in Azerbaijan. Though you may have grown up to become a rooster, I will always know you. But perchance man in his infinite wickedness has slaughtered you for a pastime, or for a meal or just to prove his supremacy, I will seek out your grave. On your tombstone, this epithet will I engrave: “To the Azerbaijani chick that taught me the true meaning of life. Rest in Peace.”