Happy furry animals

One week on since the launch of Operation Menagerie. Looking back, the relatively smallscale introduction of two guinea pigs and two chickens have meant considerably more challenges in Kenya than they might have in UK.

First source your animals.

The few petshops here have fish and hamsters. Street hawkers wander up and down with rabbits and puppies. I've been scanning notice boards for at least six months for a trail to a chicken, guinea pigs, or, in a dream scenario, a guineafowl or two. Like much in Kenya, it turns out to be much about who you know.

I asked our friendly butcher to check with his chicken suppliers whether they could save two hens from the chop. I enquired at the local egg shop and asked them to pass on a message. I followed a wild goose chase to the densely packed business district, where a friend of a friend maintained hawkers sold chickens. One friend had bought them from a man who ran a battery farm in his back garden, but that didn't sound like a happy start to life. Another's home help had bought them in her village and transported them 5 hours by matatu - but she wasn't going home for a while and it seemed a very big ask.

In the end entrepreneurial endeavour won out. I suggested to the chicken coop seller by the side of the road that she'd massively expand her market if she supplied chickens too. 'When would you like them by, tomorrow?' So her father, who makes the chicken coops in a village outside Nairobi, travelled in by matatu with the newly erected coop and two soon-to-be-resident protesting chickens in a box under his seat. They had red combs - don't say they're trying to palm off two cockerels on me - but I did negotiate sale or return if they turned out to be male & non-egg-laying.

Action Guinea Pig was kickstarted by a friend texting me a number from a noticeboard. A delightful Swedish woman was offering as many guineapigs as we wanted, free to a good home. Unusual for Nairobi, I thought. When we rolled up on Saturday morning I realised I'd misunderstood the scale of her plight. Having started with two guinea pigs as pets for her daughter three years ago she'd been unable to get them accurately sexed, and they'd proliferated. Three years on, having supplied most of Nairobi's expats, she still had fifty guinea pigs, now in a walk-in run in their garden, linked to a second run in their garage by a Heath Robinson plastic pipe. 'We keep the sexes separate' she said, as a boy jumped over the chicken wire to the girls, and back again. 'But we can't be held responsible if it turns out that the one you take is pregnant.' A nod is as good as a wink, we chose males. A friend who was another grateful recipient from the same source took girls home, for one to give birth the very next day!

Then house your pets, safely.

There is a yawning chasm between the websites written by guineapig aficiandos, mainly in the US, on appropriate lifestyle choices for guineapigs, and any semblance of reality here where so many humans live poorly nourished, on the street. The websites talk of the joys of guineapigs living inside the house in runs made of plastic cardboard (corex) lined with fleece to keep them warm. And we do remember fondly how nice it was to have our guineapigs in the dining room, wheeping wildly whenever the fridge door opened. Hence a day spent on an increasingly zany scavanger hunt for corex. Approached department heads in supermarkets with Dulux signs made of corex (belong to the manufacturer, not for sale); copy shops and sign makers; an art materials shop; and with increasing desperation, an architects, all in vain. Lateral thinking - a rigid paddling pool? - excluded - imported, they cost £140.

So, and don't tell the website authors, our guinea pigs are housed outside, in a wholly original, exclusive guinea pig house, made to my design on the back of an envelope by the chicken coop maker (further extending her market). Then the fundi workman, the only person who could source the timber for their run, needed daily lifts 30 minutes each way, to and from our house with his timber, while I sourced and shifted chicken wire.

And then what do they eat?

And what do they eat when food is so expensive here, our guards aren't exactly well nourished, and we've just held a sale which only raised three months' food bill for our partner orphanage? Here the chickens are easy. Even Nakumatt, the Waitrose equivalent, has 20kg bags of layers mash on sale in every branch. Tasty treats - roasted maize or dried fish for calcium - need a trip to the market but basically easy peasy.

But the guinea pigs. Oh dear. Nearest source of hay was initially an hour's drive each way in Karen, till I did a deal for two bales with a riding stables. And the websites are strident. Guinea pigs need guinea pig pellets. No substitutes. But we're in Kenya, so are they closer to rabbit or hamster pellets? Supplemented by peelings and sukuma wiki (spinach) from our vegetable patch. But the sukuma wiki had been being eaten by the guards for lunch, and, in a don't ask don't tell initiative, sold by the gardener's wife in her market stall. I guess a few leaves a day don't make much difference, but poaching from human mouths to make sure that guinea pigs get their five a day isn't easy.

We've had our Benny Hill chase scenes at twilight, six of us to catch a chicken and put her safely to bed. And again the next night. We only ever managed to catch one chicken, squwacking wildly, the other preferring to roost in the shrubbery, and one week on, thats where she has opted to stay, with the other now happily snoring in the coop when we come to shut the door. But there's nothing to beat the excitement of searching the coop to discover an egg, and the growing At Ease-ness of chickens who now let us get within a pace before making for the safety of the shrubbery.