Why did I cross the road to buy the chicken?

Once, donkey’s years ago, I attended a function at the German ambassador’s house in Waterkloof. It was something to do with the Friedrich Naumann-Stiftung, which funded the student publication I was editing at the time. We stood around eating canapes and listened politely to a few words from the generous Germans. All pleasant enough, though not especially memorable.

The memorable part had nothing to do with liberal student politics or a commitment to free markets and the rule of law. No, what I remember about that evening, mostly, is the ducks.

They were everywhere. In the paintings on the walls. On the plates, printed in patterns on the cushions, on the handles of the umbrellas. Even the toilet cleaner was Toilet Duck. Everywhere you looked, there were big ducks, small ducks, brass ducks, glass ducks, ceramic ducks, resin ducks, ducks shaped in crystal and carved out of wood — a nightmarish gallimaufry of anatine bric-a-brac.

It was horrible. I never looked at Germans in quite the same way again.

Yet here I am, in danger of falling into the same trap. There are already three wooden chickens perched amidst the chaos on my desk at work and I know in my heart of hearts that there will be more. The first, a birthday present from my ex-husband, is close to 60cm tall. He bought it years ago from the side of Witkoppen Road and inadvertently triggered my desire to own examples of kraal fowls as rendered in jacaranda wood and painted with PVA. The second, much smaller, was a purchase from a curio shop in Vaalwater (which now appears to be marketing itself as the Hoedspruit — sorry, Marulaneng — of the west), and the third I bought last weekend from a man sitting under the bridge outside the Numbi Gate of the Kruger Park.

The third is definitely my favourite. Unlike the other two, he’s black, with handsome yellow legs and a bright red comb. He has a wonderfully imperious expression, of the kind I would imagine a real African cockerel would display — right up until the moment somebody wrung his neck and stuck him into the nearest cooking pot. Chickens, like Nguni cowhides, have an African authenticity somehow lacking in wooden giraffes or soapstone hippos. Perhaps it’s because they symbolise a connection with the domestic, with the daily lives of ordinary people, rather than the tourist vision of Serengeti mapped onto an entire continent.

I hope to collect more examples at the next opportunity I get. Numbi Gate man might charge Dutch tourist prices, but he’s good. Next time, I’m going to buy a bigger one.