I stopped by Mambo’s shop this morning on my way to work when he invited me for a cup of tea. And while I was being handed over the tea in a blue plastic mug by his wife, Mambo was busy shoeing off an eagle that was circling in the air. The eagle had come dangerously low to the ground where several young chicks were busy feeding on some morsels of grain. And as Mambo came over to join me after scaring off the eagle, I inquired about the whereabouts of the mother hen. To which Mambo answered that it had been stolen. But before he could elaborate, a policeman from the local cop station passed by the shop and Mambo started exchanging morning pleasantries in a loud jovial voice as is common for him when any of his customers or person that he knows passes by. And at that point, Mambo’s wife picked up the story about the mother hen.

A while ago, the mother hen laid its eggs and when the time to brood came, it faithfully sat on them as is normal for a mother hen. Ordinarily, it would sit on them for three weeks, and then the chicks would hatch. However, the Mambo family was shocked to discover one afternoon that the mother hen was missing. This was 16 days into the brooding period. The mother hen had been stolen! They did not know what to do with the eggs since without the mother hen to provide warmth, the developing chicks would die within an hour.

But as fate would have it, their neighbor had a mother hen that was also in the brooding stage. And by another stroke of fate, the mother hen was without eggs to sit on since the neighbour’s family had eaten all its eggs. And so Mambo borrowed the neighbor’s hen and it gladly sat on the eggs and kept them warm until the chicks hatched 5 days later. The surrogate mother hen then was allowed to take care of the chicks for a few days before being returned back to its owner.

What struck me about the story was the happy coincidence of having another brooding hen at the neighbour’s. When a chicken lays its eggs and the brooding stage or time to sit on the eggs comes and there are no eggs to sit on, then the stage passes within 5 days. That is why it is easy to see the serendipity that brought the chicks to be.

And as I finished my tea and walked away from Mambo’s shop, I knew that my belief that what is meant to be will be had just been affirmed once again.