*A quick warning for those with weak stomachs: this story involves the death by machete to a goat, as well as the consumption of things that in my opinion should not be consumed*
I have never had any problem eating meat. In fact, in the states I would eat meat at every meal if possible. Even if I were merely having cereal for breakfast, I would see no harm in a little beef turkey snack on the side. However, coming to Tanzania has decreased my meat consumption significantly. When I am in town I will get it from time to time, but in the village, it tends to be almost inedible in my opinion. Boiling meat is a go to meat cooking maneuver here. This is fine, but they boil it for so long that it tends to be jaw ruining tough. Also, in an attempt to prevent even the tiniest piece of meat from going to waste, a large majority of what is cooked is bone and fat. And removing really rubbery meat, and fat fastened to the bone is quite a challenge, so I tend to stay away from it.
Anyways, on to the actually story…the goat. Yesterday I walked outside, making my way to fetch some water, and saw a few of the other teachers playing tag with a goat. One finally got the goat by the horns, and another quickly roped its legs together. Once they had it’s legs tied together, I finally realize what was about to happen. Naturally, since I have never really been present at the slaughtering of anything prior to this, I take out my camera. So lucky for all of who you do in fact want to hear about the fateful end of this little guy, I have visual documentation as well…Goat goes down, two of the teachers are on ‘hold the body still’ duty, the other is over the goats neck holding a mean looking machete. Before he goes at it, a fourth comes over with a bowl and places it right beside the neck, beneath the chin. I am going to start using the teachers names so I can stop having to say another teacher for everyone…so, after this, Mr. Nderumaki (teacher at the goats neck) goes to town like a lumberjack sawing wood. As he is making his way through the trachea, he is yelling directions at Mr. Tendwa (teacher with the bowl by the neck) making sure none of the blood hits the ground and all gets into the bowl (or so I thought was the reasoning). After coming to the spine, the machete is no longer sharp enough to go any further, so for about 5 minutes we sat there, collecting blood, and waiting. They all were unfazed. I, however, felt rather nauseous.
Towards the end if the waiting game, I realized that Mr. Tendwa had been constantly stirring the bowl of blood, keeping it from congealing. This seemed a little strange to me. Well a few things were strange…first, why they would be using a bowl that was used to hold cooked food…second, if they just wanted to collect the blood in a prevention of dirtying the ground, why were they so actively tending to it…and then they added salt it. This I did not understand at all so I asked what could they possibly be planning to do with this now partially congealed, salty, maroon mixture. They told me it was for a delicious drink. I literally almost vomited in my mouth at this point. The killing of the goat and everything that followed was stomach-churning for sure, but this idea was the worst for me, hands down. They told me not only was it delicious, but it was a medicine for any disease. Yup, any disease. Regardless of what it is, it turns out that fresh, salty, goat blood will cure any ailment. Yuck.
All right…so step one down. Our friend the goat has passed on to a better place. Step two, hang it from a near by tree, and prepare to dissect. The carving of the goat was not the worst for me since I guess I have seen a Kangaroo bite the dust with some bush buddies of mine in the land down under. Also, this part was done quite well…the whole goat hide was removed in one piece which was impressive to watch…especially considering the few blunt tools they had to use. Then it was time to explore the chest and abdominal cavities. This was probably the coolest part of the whole debacle for me. Stomach, both intestines, liver, kidney, ovaries, heart, lungs, got to see it all…like being back in Bio, Freshman year of high school, exploring those fetal pigs. This carcass, however, was not cold and did not smell of formaldehyde, but was warm, bleeding, and smelled slightly of excrement that was being released by the no longer functioning intestines. Interesting to see nonetheless.
On the topic of excrement, after the stomach and both intestines were removed Mr. Tendwa took them over to the closest banana tree with a bucket of water in hand. He proceeded to empty the partially digested food around the tree by flipping the stomach inside out, and juicing the intestines, kind of like someone would do to a Freezie Pop or Go-Gurt tube (if you don’t know what I’m talking about you all have internet so you can google it or something). A bowlful of water was used to rinse off the leftover greenish slime that was still clinging to the inside of the stomach, which looked kind of like an old school shag-rug, and then the two internal organs were dropped into a large cooking pot. As Mr. Tendwa was de-pooping, Mr. Nderumaki was hacking away at the rest. Six different sticks had been fashioned into shish kebab skewers. And as Mr. Nderumaki karate chopped the goat, pieces of bone, fat, and a little bit of meat were slid on the skewers, to be cooked over open flame.
Meanwhile, literally everything else was being added to the pot containing the shag rug stomach. And I do mean everything. Liver, kidney, lungs, heart, eyes… everything. I guess they did say that the ovaries were not to be put into the bowl, and they also cut off the tip of the goats tongue (they said something about how the tip of the tongue often will contain malaria…so naturally, it got cut off). This bowl was then filled about half way with water, and set over a hot fire and let to boil. The bone, fat, meat kebabs were then salted up and handed out amongst the six of us to begin cooking over some open flames.
The goat kebabs were not too much of a problem for me. The only iffy part was that it was difficult to get the meat to cook all the way through, therefore I ended up eating it quite rare. This was not normally a problem. but after seeing the goat meandering around the school only hours before, the borderline bloody meat made me slightly queasy. The stew of entrails was a more trying experience for my gag reflex. I guess if you grew up on a farm maybe this recount is not all that out of the ordinary, but I am not used to eating, well, very single part of an animal. The stew consumption began first with a glass of yellowish juice. The water that was used to boil all the organs and such was divvied up between all of us. As I just mentioned, it was yellow, or yellowish brown, very chunky, and had quite a meaty taste to it. Following the yellow stew, we dug into the mystery parts sitting in this big bowl. I had 4 or 5 bites (each with a slightly different taste, and very different texture) before I decided I had to through in the towel. Dessert was meant to be the blood, I believe, but there was just no possibility I was going to commit to that. I told them as politely as possible that I was too full to eat any more goat organs, so I would sadly have pass up on the blood.
For those who would like, here is a link to the photos I took during this ordeal. Don’t click if you have a weak stomach!
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