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Traveling is usually fun, but after the first two weeks there tends to come a day when you feel utterly incapable of entertaining yourself. I was twelve-years-old and bored out of my mind after one month in Eritrea. It’s hard to get bored in Eritrea with so many people and so many things to do. My grandmother’s house, where I was staying, had about ten people staying there at the time. That’s ten different people this twelve-year-old could turn to for entertainment. I would urge my uncles to teach me a new song on the piano, and then practice it for hours. Sometimes I would take this little toy piano to the road in front of our house so that I could teach the songs I learned to the neighborhood kids. My sister Yohana and I spent many hours playing with the neighborhood kids. We would skip rope, play hand games, or, at night, play hide and seek. I thought I knew the rules of hide and seek, but there was something different about their version. First it seemed like the game was limited to the road in front of my grandmother’s house, but depending on who was Seeker, the kids would sometimes run around the corner and hide at the next block. My sister and I just went with the flow, not really sure why the rules changed so much. When we played hand games with them, we did not entirely understand the songs, either. We understood the language, Tigrinya, well enough. The kids had to slow down when they talked to us to make sure we understood, but we communicated just fine. The problem with the hand games was that they were not all in Tigrinya. I knew this for a fact because one of the games involved a wacky English rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” sung while spinning in circles in the middle of summer. Maybe the kids didn’t understand the songs they sang, either.

After a month of all this, we found ourselves battling boredom. Nothing seems new and exciting. We’d seen it all, we’d done it all. In other words, we missed TV.

Now it happens that my grandmother actually does have a TV, but it does not offer any of the cartoons we love. After desperately flipping through the limited number of channels at various times of the day, we discover that for one hour each day there is a children’s program on one of them. Now, this would be fine except for one big problem: it isn’t cartoons. Not only is it an educational program, but it’s in Arabic! English would have been ideal, but Tigrinya would have been OK, too. Of all things, why Arabic? The main language in Eritrea is Tigrinya, so that is what everyone around us speaks. On the TV, a group of kids start singing a familiar tune with an Arabic twist. It’s none other than the Alphabet Song. Annoyed, we turn off the TV and leave the room.

Between the main house and the two outer buildings is a large courtyard with trees and shrubs. A few chickens usually roam the yard, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on whether my grandmother felt like making a chicken stew. She usually has the same hen for a good long time that produces eggs for us, but the roosters would come and go. Earlier that week we had turned to the chickens when boredom first struck. I would start chasing one from one side of the yard, and then my sister would come at it from the other side so we had it cornered. They were fast! Sometimes they’d run, but often they’d just squawk and fly up a few feet. We derived so much entertainment from teasing the chickens mercilessly. My grandmother eventually told us that chasing the hens caused them to produce fewer eggs. I felt so guilty when I heard that. Learning that a supposedly innocent game actually causes some harm was always a bit of a shock. My sister and I promised our grandmother not to bother the hens anymore.

Unable to chase the hens., we instead scheme up a game involving the rooster. It occurs to us that if anyone so much as looks out a window or steps out into the courtyard, they would definitely see my sister and me chasing the rooster. So with all the maturity we could muster, we decide not to chase the rooster. Well, not exactly—our methods of entertainment just became a bit more sophisticated

Yohana and I stand outside leaning against the wall that runs by the entrance to the kitchen. Very, very casually—as if innocent of ulterior motives—we chat about cartoons, movies, and the neighborhood kids. Meanwhile, the rooster pecks around about fifteen feet away.

“So, Haben, what show do you think we’d be watching right now if we were back in America?”

“Maybe Nickelodeon is doing a special of Chicken Run,” I answer. Yohana snickers, but then someone comes walking down the hall. “Hey Yohana,” I say hastily, “do you think it’s going to rain?”

She looks up at the sky and takes her time deciding. My aunt Senu steps out just as Yohana makes up her mind about the weather, “Oh, yes, it definitely is going to rain. You know how it is here, pouring rain every single afternoon.”

Senu walks past us towards one of the outer buildings, but then stops suddenly. “Of course, this is the rainy season,” she says defensively. We learned long ago that the easiest way to get Senu worked up is to make the smallest criticism of her country, even if it is only a comment on the *interesting* way they do hamburgers, or, in this case, the weather. “The rain is good for the land,” she goes on, “it keeps down the dust.”

“Yeah, and turns it to mud,” I mutter.

“Anyways, so what are you two doing standing there?” she demands.

“Nothing!” We give her our biggest smiles.

“Uhu, I’ll be watching you.” And with that she turns and starts heading for the outer building.

“Hey Senu, I like your shirt!” Yohana calls, her tongue coated with sugar.

“Yeah! It’s really nice!” I try to sound sincere, but fail miserably. Senu being Senu, she would not buy it for a second.

“Troublemakers,” she mutters in Tigrinya. The literal meaning of the word would be “troublemakers,” but its common use has an affectionate ring to it.

When she’s gone, I whisper, “She has no idea!”

“I know!” Yohana giggles. “Hey, here he comes!” Our little friend the rooster is finally pecking his way towards our side of the yard. As planned, Yohana and I continue chatting by the wall, purposely facing each other so that Mr. Rooster would not suspect a thing.

“So, you think hens and roosters taste the same?” I venture. I know I have to keep my voice calm, but any human could tell I was suppressing a laugh. I prayed the rooster couldn’t tell.

“Hmmm,” Yohana mused. “Grandma usually takes the roosters, so maybe they taste better.”

“Oh yes, roosters would be much better. This one could probably make thirty chicken nuggets. Hey, he’s coming closer. You think he’s volunteering?”

“You think it’s time? Shall we get him?”

“OK, Yohana,” I slowly step away from the wall and edge towards the other side of the rooster. “You block that side, I’ll block this side.” The rooster is still calmly pecking at the ground, oblivious to the trap. We have him surrounded on all four sides. On one side is the wall we had been standing against, the open double-doors to the kitchen at a ninety degree angle to the wall, and Yohana and I stood where his only possible escape would be. We inch forward, slowly closing him in.

“He’s doing it!” says Yohana gleefully. “The stupid rooster is actually following our plan!” Since the rooster cannot walk through a wall or walk past us, he is forced to do what we want him to do. Mr. Rooster struts into the kitchen.

Quickly, we step in after him and close the doors. There is another door leading out of the kitchen, so I quickly step in front of it to prevent him from trying any funny moves. He takes his time pecking at the kitchen floor, probably enjoying the abundance of crumbs.

“Aww, isn’t he sweet?” Yohana says in a mock-cheery voice, “he’s fattening himself up for us!” We laugh the laugh of excited children. The sound reverberates against the walls of the small kitchen. Startled, the rooster looks up.

At last, the moment we had been waiting for: the moment we had worked so hard to create in hopes of casting off that miserable cloud of boredom. The rooster looks up, and in the glass door of the oven sees his own little reflection. We watch bright-eyed as the rooster puffs up, spreads his wings, and declares war on his reflection. “Buck-buck-buck bucka!” It is so loud! The whole house shakes with the rooster’s rage. He flares up and flies at his reflection again. “Buck-buck-buck bucka!” His beak pounds the glass of the oven door, but amazingly it does not break. Yohana and I are doubled over with laughter. We had planned to sneak off down the hall so no one would know how the rooster got there, but the laughter felt so enlivening after so many hours of boredom, we stayed in the kitchen with the rooster: all three of us in hysterics. The two sisters sharing a special moment, treasuring their teamwork, and the stupid rooster raging war on a non-existent rival.

Senu comes running into the kitchen to rescue the oven. The way the rooster attacks it, the glass door is at serious danger of breaking into smithereens. My grandmother told us that she tried to avoid having more than one rooster at a time because they always ended up fighting each other over the hens. So you see, my sister and I were trying to educate the rooster of machismo’s follies. Nonetheless, Senu scolds us. As a result, we decide to take our mirth elsewhere. Finding the living room unoccupied, we settle into the couch to savor the memory.

“That was hilarious!” Yohana starts laughing all over again.

“Next time, we should totally get it videotaped! Maybe Ramon could help us out.”

“Yeah!” Yohana cheers. “And that rooster will totally fall for it again!”

“This is what happens when there’s no TV. If we can’t watch cartoons, we’ll just have to make our own!”

****

Ten years later, Yohana decides she wants to become a veterinarian.

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