Her Lordship, Chief Justice of the Supreme Pecking Council
Yèyé Àlàbá “The Settler of Perches”
Àlàbá Ọmọ́tọ́lá
Ẹni tí ó gbọ́n ju ẹjọ́ lọ, tí ìjà ń sá fún(The one wiser than the quarrel, from whom the quarrel itself flees)
Chief Justice, community elder, and the only authority both parties accept in the annual Best Perch dispute. Rules once, in proverbs, and is never appealed.
- Tribe
- Isa-Brown
- Age
- Elder hen
- Laying status
- Retired from laying
- Office
- Chief Justice of the Supreme Pecking Council
- Favourite food
- Bitter leaf, 'for perspective'
The story so far
Yèyé Àlàbá retired from laying years ago and ascended, by universal relief, to the judiciary. The Supreme Pecking Council under her leadership hears every case in the shade after the afternoon feed, on the principle that 'no bird is reasonable while hungry.'
Her most demanding docket is the annual Best Perch dispute, the high rail with the evening sun, contested every dry season since before the water tank. Her rulings rotate the perch by a formula she has never fully disclosed and no one has ever successfully challenged, partly because it appears to be fair and partly because challenging it requires understanding it.
She judges in proverbs, translates them for the chicks, and closes every session the same way: 'Court is risen. Go and share something.' On Sunday mornings she can be found beside Mama Gold under the mango tree, where the Republic's two longest memories gently correct each other's history.
Life events
11 June 2026
Voting under the mango tree
Chief Justice Yèyé Àlàbá presides over polling with a single rule: no bird votes hungry. Voting closes at the afternoon feed. Turnout is declared total, because she counted everyone on the way in.
20 June 2026
Mama Gold's Law passes second reading
Shade, trough priority, and freedom from sudden committee membership for every retired layer. The gallery sings; the Speaker conducts, eventually.
Coverage in The Coop Times →11 July 2026
Under the mango tree, without debate
The Assembly votes his resting place without a single speech against, the only such vote in the Republic's history. Sisi Ngozi organises it in an afternoon. The dusk whistle begins that evening.
23 July 2026
The teacher and the convener
Tadé the Foraging Master takes Youth and Chick Development; Rọ́nkẹ́ Mama Owambe takes Social Affairs. Elder Yèyé Àlàbá hands over the social advisory she held for years with relief and pride, and books the Reconciliation Bench for the afternoon, just in case.
7 August 2026
The whole flock must see
There is always a temptation, after something terrible, to settle it quietly and move on, and some in the Republic felt it now. Chief Justice Yèyé Àlàbá did not. The flock's first trial for the death of a citizen, she ruled, would be heard in the open, in the shade, after the afternoon feed, where anyone who wished could watch. 'We do not peck in the dark,' she said. She set a date, and that was that.
12 August 2026
The witnesses, and the evidence
When the trial began, Cindy's neighbours from Coop Three spoke first, quietly and clearly. They told of a hot week, a crowded roost, a fight that went too far, and a hen who had only ever kept the peace. Then Dr. Featherwell stood up with the facts, and the facts were not kind to anybody. Too many birds. One cool perch. Heat that made short tempers shorter. 'This coop,' she said, 'was a fight waiting to happen.' Nobody in the shade argued, because nobody could.
14 August 2026
Two truths, one sentence
The whole Republic came the next day, and Yèyé Àlàbá did not hurry a word of it. 'A bird is gone,' she began, 'and no ruling I give will bring her back. But we can still be just.' Her judgement held two truths at once and refused to drop either: the coop had failed Eseosa, and Eseosa had failed Cindy. Eseosa would leave the flock, not harmed, never harmed, but rehomed far from Coop Three where she could do no more damage. The Republic calls it exile. Then the Chief Justice looked up and made the rest a promise: 'We will build coops where this cannot happen. That is Cindy's justice too.'
14 September 2026
The docket nobody envies
Every dry season brings the same case back to the Supreme Pecking Council: who gets the high rail, the good one, with the last of the evening sun. Chief Justice Yèyé Àlàbá has settled it every year of her life by a rotation formula she has never once disclosed and no bird has ever beaten, partly because it is fair and partly because beating it would require understanding it. This year the shade under the mango tree was fuller than usual for so small a matter. Nobody said why out loud. Everybody was thinking of the season the perch quarrel went further than a quarrel should ever go, and the good bird the Republic did not get to keep.
14 September 2026
Two hens, one rail
Two hens stood before her, and the maddening thing was that both were right. One had seniority and a bad wing that wanted the warm rail. The other had held the spot honestly for a season and did not see why waiting her turn meant giving it up. In a lesser court it was exactly the shape of trouble. Yèyé Àlàbá did not hurry. First she ruled the whole court into the shade to wait out the afternoon feed, on her oldest principle: 'No bird is reasonable while hungry.' Only when every crop was full did she open her beak, because she could feel the room remembering, and she had no intention of letting it remember the wrong lesson.
14 September 2026
The proverb and the second rail
She ruled the way she always rules, in a proverb, rotating the old high rail between them by her undisclosed formula so neither won and neither lost. But this year she added something new, and leaned on it. The worst dry season, she reminded the court, taught the Republic to stop treating one good perch as the only prize worth having. Since Cindy's Law, the rebuilt coop has many good rails, high, dry, and out of the crush, so a bird turned off one this evening has a fine one to go to tonight. 'A perch you must fight for,' she said, 'is a perch there are too few of. We did not only settle this quarrel. We built it smaller.' The older hen had come with her feathers half up, ready for the old fight. Then she looked across at the new high rail catching the last of the evening sun, warm and empty and waiting for her, and something in her shoulders let go. The Chief Justice sent both hens up, one to the old rail on rotation, one to the new one, and for the first time in memory neither of them argued.
14 September 2026
Court is risen
'Court is risen,' the Chief Justice closed, the way she closes every session. 'Go and share something.' And the flock did, up into a coop with room enough that sharing did not cost anybody the warm spot. This is the quiet dividend nobody puts on a poster: a Republic that once lost a bird to a crowded roost now settles the very same quarrel with a proverb and a spare rail. That is what Better Housing actually buys, not luxury, but peace, fewer fights, and room to roost. Help us build the next coop to Cindy's Law. Back the Better Housing campaign at farm.kisi.africa/support.
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