Chicks and Crocodiles

Last Friday morning found us piling into our car along with some of Kayla’s classmates and heading out of town to the Chicken farm called Novos Horizontes.  For the expat community here in Nampula, we call the area “The Farm”.  But it’s really a number of businesses that are run by dedicated Christians from around the World.  The official name is "Community of Fusion."They use the businesses as a way to provide jobs for nationals as well as way to show and teach good ethics in business dealings.  Their ultimate desire is to disciple and strength the local church.  While they are busy running businesses, they are first and foremost Christians spreading the love of Jesus.   If you are curious about what they are doing here is a youtube link to see more about what they are doing.

"Communities of Fusion: Mozambique"

 So Kayla’s kindergarten class, Grade 0 as they call them here, had a field trip and I had agreed to drive.  The morning was full of fun and lots of new information.  Since all the home school families also have kids in the kindergarten class, the home school kids got to join in the field trip too.  It was a fun morning as we learned all about baby chicks.  The day we visited they were busy getting 20,000 chicks ready to ship to a town about 5 hours away for people to raise there.  The kids had some much fun holding the baby chicks.

Getting to touch the chicks was so much fun.  They were so soft.

The smile says it all.

Look what I found.

Everything thing needs a little "kiss" and love now and then.

Learning how to tell if it's a boy or a girl chick

The whole group

Then it was off to the crocodile farm.  There is a location on the farm where they are now raising crocodiles.  Crocodiles are on the top of the food chain so are easy to feed.  When the crocodile gets big enough, they can be sold for their skins as well as the meat can be eating.  But because the skin is so important, the kids had to be very quiet as not to scare the crocodiles.  If a crocodiles gets scared they scratch themselves leaving their skin not usable.  So quietly we watched them feed the crocodiles.

The trail to the crocodiles

Dipping our feet in disinfectant so that we didn't bring in any disease.

These were four weeks old crocodiles.

The 4 week olds enjoying their lunch (maggots).

These crocodiles are around 1 year and 4 months

Resting in the shade but we did get to see a couple move very quickly to the water.

We also found a few other "friends" along the way.

Walking Stick

Very Big Spider. I was happy he stayed right there in his web!

Lastly we stopped and played at the school where the kids will travel to next year for Grade 1.  It was a very fun morning.  Thank you Novos Horizonte, Rapale International School, and Eggs for Africa for taking the time out of your busy schedules to teach us more about chicks and crocodiles.