A price fair and true

Several teachers have mentioned to me that teaching Timorese can be challenging because they are not well-versed in the habit of critical thinking . . . (Can I cynically suggest that they are ahead of the times since clearly Western countries are valiantly attempting to educate their citizens in the more politically preferable art of NOT thinking?) 

This is certainly true with regard to the traffic.  When my students find out I ride a motorcycle they all warn me, “Be careful.  The traffic here is crazy!  There are many accidents every day.”  Despite this belief no one, it seems, has thought that it might become less crazy if people, well drove more sensibly.  It’s simple cause and effect.

Anyway, my housemate Gabe told the story of a chicken who met an untimely demise at the hands – or more precisely, wheels – of a wheel driving through the residential streets.  This is nothing new.  Animals wander freely and so it is inevitably that they will be hit by cars and motorcycles.  It is also nothing special for the driver to offer monetary compensation of ten to twenty dollars to the animal’s owner.  While the dogs might not be primary producers, the goats and chickens and roosters might be a major breadwinner in the household.  And there in lies the story of the ten thousand dollar chicken (and that’s US dollars, which makes the story greater or lesser, depending on the exchange rate).

So the bones of the story are this:  Chicken runs into road.  Car drives down road.  Driver fails to see chicken.  Chicken meets wheels.  End of chicken.  But the commencement of the interesting part of the story.

So the driver gets out and offers to pay compensation.

“How much?” he asks the chicken’s owner.  “What’s a fair price?”

The owner pauses, frowns a moment and then says, “Ten thousand dollars.”

“Ten thousand dollars!” the driver splutters.  “What the . . . ?”  (okay I embellish).  “I’m not paying ten thousand dollars.  How is that a fair price?”

“Well,” says the chicken’s owner.  “That wasn’t an ordinary chicken. That was a prized egg-laying chicken.  She produces at least five eggs a day, every day.  She was a fairly young chicken and so had many egg-laying years ahead of her.  Then I’ve had to add in her children.  She was the best layer I’ve ever had.  I was planning on breeding her and then I would also have those hens that would also be good layers and then their daughters too.  Imagine it!  A whole line of exceptional egg-layers.” 

Here the chicken’s owner might have glanced sadly at the pile of feathers and bones. “But of course,” he might have added, “that will now not happen.”

He might have looked back at the driver and continued, “You seem like a reasonable man, a business man even.  I’m sure that you can see my predicament and that given the circumstances, ten thousand dollars for my best egg-layer and all she is now unable to accomplish is more than fair.”

PS.  The outcome of this exchange is unknown and would probably ruin a good story ;-)