The rabbits have arrived!

Small update of the rabbit project. I wrote this for a PC article.

Rearing Rabbits in Yapalsi

We’ve all heard “obroni give me toffee” (in our respective dialects) enough times by now to probably feel it before it even comes out of the child’s mouth. It seems we are always surrounded by talks of food. With our own dreams of food, our cravings for food, I would venture a guess food is probably on our minds 40-70% of our days. 

Spending time in my village I realized how much time everybody else spends thinking about food. The difference is that while I may think about a deep dish pizza, my house children were just dreaming about meat. This is when I realized what I wanted to accomplish my first year at site- implementing rabbit rearing. I want to be the meat winner.

I began my project by holding two meetings, one on the benefits of rearing rabbits and another about how to construct the hutches.  I foresaw the rest of the project proceeding smoothly. Those interested would build their hutches in a timely manner and come to me with any questions they might have. Once they finished I would go and buy some rabbits. This, of course, was not how it happened.

Days crawled by and the weeks flew by. Week after week passed by and nobody, aside from one person, built their hutches. Why not? Didn’t I make it clear that this would be the ideal time to raise rabbits because vegetation was plentiful and the birthing rates would be at its highest? I thought people would be naturally motivated into beginning and finishing their hutches. However after a month passed by I decided a change needed to happen so I set a deadline- in fact I set 3 different deadlines.

Before I could set a 4^th deadline I had a turning point. This happened when I brought in a professor to discuss nutrition and maintenance of the rabbits, with a practical portion. She brought one female rabbit to Yapalsi that same day and showed the villagers what the rabbits liked to eat. The one farmer who had finished his hutch first was allowed to keep this rabbit. This re-sparked interest and 5 families began constructing their hutches. This was roughly one and a half months after the first meeting was held. 

The week before I said I would bring the rabbits to Yapalsi (and 2 months after the original meeting) I went to visit my homes with the unfinished hutches. Throughout this week I visited every other day begging and pleading for people to finish their hutches. My criteria for a finished hutch consisted of: a watertight room, an outdoor patio, and two nesting boxes. Of the 6 houses that said they would finish their hutches only 4 truly did. I said sorry to everybody who didn’t finish but I could not bring them any rabbits (what were they planning to do, hold the rabbits in their hands until their hutches finished themselves?). The next morning on my way out of town the two families who were not finished the day before rushed to show me their finished hutches. Also another 4 families, who had not shown interest before, stopped me and tell me they had almost finished their hutches.

In a happily ever after scenario I could have accommodated everybody who wanted to rear rabbits, but it simply was not possible to buy an extra 8 rabbits the day of from my seller. I went with a “first finished first served” method. 

Since the arrivals of the rabbits I’ve come to realize that my project has really just started because the real challenge is going to be raising the rabbits. I’m sure there will be more unforeseen obstacles but if there is one thing I’ve learned while being in Ghana, it’s that laughing makes everything better.

 Overall 12 rabbits have been brought in and another 8 are still to arrive.