Slaughter in the House

At the market, waiting for help to find the right price.

I never anticipated being so up close and personal with my food. But for our Christmas celebration we decided to do it in local fashion and slaughter a ram so that we could share the meat with our neighbors as a sign of our joy and thankfulness. So, on the closest market day, I went to the animal market with our language teacher. He told me that the sellers would quickly realize that we’re just two scholars who know nothing of buying animals, so he needed to pick up a cousin who was more versed in such things. The cousin knew someone in the market who helped us find the best ram for our money for a dollar commission. Apparently, this is a good time for buying because we got a ram for half or a third of what it would have been around a Muslim celebration time. After tying the legs and putting it in the back of our car we returned home where a neighbor friend had agreed to slaughter it for us. Our dog was keenly interested in pouncing on the ram and broke his chain at one point, but the ram was making his best efforts to get at the dog as well. So, our neighbor and a teenage boy started the job quickly by draining the blood in a hole near one of our trees, then when it finally settled down they cut a hole near the back knee joint and blew lots of air in. This help them separate the hide from the meat (the hide was a present to this neighbor). After a long process of skinning, they hung the meat up on the nearby tree and took it a part. We took a leg of mutton for putting in the oven and the rest they cut into small pieces to fry. This included all the intestines and “children of the insides” as they call it, which are the best parts from their way of thinking. Our language teacher returned to get the head and hooves to cook at his house, which are actually the most desired and honored dish you can serve. The teenager who helped free of charge got to take the testicles home to eat as his special reward.

I was impressed by all the flies that the meat-workers had to deal with, but they handled everything very well and there wasn’t too much mess to clean up with water, soap and sand in the end. Then our house helper started with the frying outside in a big pot of oil which we borrowed from our church. Several of the neighbors came over to help at different times with pots, utensils, or giant mortar and pestles that we didn’t have on hand. When we finally distributed the meat at night to neighbors, they were excited to have a treat of this fried to a crisp meat. They all wished us blessings on our celebration and we got to speak a little about why we were celebrating. One of the most striking things for me was realizing how strange it was for me and La Maestra to be walking down the street as a couple and visiting people as a couple. Men and women do most of their social things separately, from visiting to eating to shopping, etc. Also, in the end, we’re not too excited to do again because of all the time and hassle it was to prepare and pull off. But it was well received and a good way of spreading news so it may become a tradition for us.

-- El Padre