by Deepa Krishnan
-India-

Journalist Deepa Krishnan traveled to Uganda as part of The Africa Reporting Project, an Initiative of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. –Ed.

There is hardly a day when Chance Christine wakes up at leisure. Sometimes it is her crying babies. Sometimes it is her backyard chickens, clucking for their morning feed.

Most times, it is both. Holding her fourteen-month-old she unlatches the door of her chicken coop to survey the birds. Amid the fluttering, she spreads the feed into a thin wooden trough. The birds noisily rush to the feed, forgetting about their eggs. Christine picks the brown eggs, holds each one to her ear, and shakes it. She quickly counts her eggs and fills her blue bowl.

It is a typical day for Chance Christine. It has been for some time, and this could well be a charmed life. Just a few years ago she was barely making ends meet by selling porridge on a roadside in Buhoma, a rural town in Uganda. Now, thanks to the chickens, she has a reasonably comfortable life - a nice house with a backyard where her children can play, and land to plant banana trees.