NGOMBO—Stanley & Todd

If you remember from the Night from Hell that happened in our little camp, Boone brought a black goat to our camp and slammed it on the ground saying, “Should I kill it right now?”

The story of Stanley (who turned out to be a girl) continues on to the next day when we actually slaughtered the thing. Jason, his friend, and Hartley (our translators) were the head honchos in slaughtering our goats. I’m not gonna lie, as we tried to eat our dinner of canned beans, I lost my appetite the closer we got to slaughtering the poor beast and when they stabbed the knife into it’s neck and drained the blood into a can, I freaked. Thankfully I kept most of my chill and didn’t want to look away just so I could say that I saw them slaughter a goat in our camp. People took turns skinning it and then we pulled out the machete to hack it down the middle. Gruesome but fascinating.

When they split the thing open, Jason pulled a joke and pretended to predict the forecast by looking into its entrails. The bladder of the coat still had milk in it so we all took turns milking the goat while others skinned it. I mean, it is pretty morbid to say but we all took a sip of the milk to try it. It was like hot almond milk. The only part of the goat that went to waste was the gall bladder full of bile but even then, a stray dog came and ate it. Gross. The interpreters hunched around the carcass and continued to exhume the rest of the innards.  They squeezed the poop and bile out of the intestines and then took all of the organ over to their fire to cook.

Jensen and I sat while we watched them cook the blood, liver, and some of the neck meat. When they poured the blood out of the can and into the pot, it looked like a can of cranberry sauce because of the hemoglobin taking on the shape of the can. They added some salt to it and then continuously stirred the blood until it curdled and turned brown. We ate it by picking up chunks with our fingers. It looked like ground beef and kind of tasted like it. Not half bad! Next was the liver. It was super chewy and they just pan fried it in a little oil but when doused with salt, it was pretty enjoyable. The neck meat was divine since all I had eaten for the past 3 weeks was oatmeal, rice, and peanut butter & jelly.

All in all, I had quite the cultural experience as I observed them hacking open a goat in a very meticulous way on a bed of leaves. Jason took the legs of meat and hung them in the tree for us to eat the next day. What is FDA when you live in the bush but 3 letters that mean nothing to us? **The bush is not for a germaphobe.

The next goat had less of a glorious killing but the way we acquired it was quite cool. As part of Rodrigo’s project on shame and witchcraft, he attended a second Hakawona funeral that week with some other students. The family of the deceased took notice and since we left right after the burial last time and didn’t return to their homestead to eat, they gave Rod a goat as a gift of thanks for attending twice. Todd wasn’t black like Stanley and we didn’t all watch as they took care of him but we did eat more of the meat this time. For lunch the day after, we pulled the legs down from the tree and brushed all of the ants off of it. Two girls sat in cleaned the meat while cutting off the fatty pieces and the hairy spots while I caramelized some onions in brown sugar and wine. We threw it all together and mixed some rice with it for a very flavorful lunch. (Flavorful according to the bush’s standards).