The Goat

The goat was not happy about being tied to the roof rack of our Jeep. But we had no choice. It would be culturally unthinkable for our Ugandan landlord to refuse such a gift from his home village, (see “The Village”).

The poor goat began to kick and bleat as we drove down the dirt track leading away from the village. Each time a hoof thumped down on the Jeep’s roof my wife and I would jump. Our infant daughter would quicken the pace of her thumb sucking and stare upward, wide-eyed. Our landlord carried on as if nothing unusual at all was taking place.

We eventually approached the end of the dirt track. I slowed the Jeep to merge with the paved road. As I did, a cascade of goat urine washed down our front windscreen. If you have spent time around goats you can well imagine the smell. Not good.

We mouth-breathed our way back to town until reached the apartment. The gardener opened the gate. His eyes lit up as he saw the goat: a Ugandan laborer might eat meat once a week, if that.

The gardener, soon joined by the other labourers at the apartment compound, untied the goat and led it away. We knew what was coming next. We bade our landlord good evening, happy to no longer be accomplices in his goat caper.

But we were wrong. An hour later the doorbell rang. We opened the door and there stood our landlord’s housekeeper, Margaret. In her hands was a large shopping bag dripping blood with a hoof protruding from the top. In his generosity, the landlord had kept a quarter of the goat, given us a quarter of the goat, and given the remaining half to the staff. There was no way we could refuse.

Thinking quickly, my wife noted to Margaret that (a) we had no experience in how to carve up goat meat and (b) we did not have a freezer in which to keep it. Margaret kindly offered to butcher our share of the goat for a small fee. The landlord generously cleared some space in his freezer for us.

The next day Margaret brought us a small bag of frozen, cubed goat meat.  We cooked it for dinner. It tasted like the bottom of a shoe. No doubt it was our cooking, but I also suspect this was one tough old goat. It had lived a hard life in the village. After we choked down a few mouthfuls, we gave up.

Each morning for the next week or so, Margaret brought a new delivery to our door. She would then ask how we enjoyed the goat from the previous day. Of course we lied.

In reality, each day I was smuggling frozen goat meat off our compound in my computer bag. I was giving the meat to the laborers on the construction site where we worked. They shared it between them, then carefully wrapped the precious meat in newspaper to take home in the evening for their families.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]