New Year's Goat

September 11th is Meskerem 1st, New Year's Day in the Ethiopian calendar. Many people slaughter a goat for the New Year celebration. Our neighbors on both sides have doomed goats tied up in their yards. Oddly, slaughtering the goat appears to be just about all that people do to celebrate the arrival of the new year, the faranjified to-do's at the Sheraton and Hilton notwithstanding.

Kristen asked Amush if her family would be slaughtering a goat. "No, no, no. No goat."

Then she added, "The other."

"Sheep?" suggested Kristen.

"Yes, sheep."

So, there are options.


• Get his goat


John told us Thursday that he was planning to get a goat for his parents. Friday morning on the way to school we asked whether he'd gotten it yet.

"Oh, yes," laughing, "that was very funny."

He got the goat at 5pm Thursday evening. That means going to the local goat selling street where herds stand on the side of the road waiting for buyers. Each animal's membership in a particular herd is marked with one or two bright dashes of color on their heads or flanks. Pink or blue spraypaint is common. This adornment is necessary as herds passing in the street commingle despite the best efforts of their guardians and must subsequently be unmingled with a few well placed taps of a stick or whip. You have to know whom to whip where. In most cases, a "whip" is a short stick with a length of moist and filthy cloth tied to it.

John bought the goat for 350birr (~$40), put it in the trunk of his tiny taxi, and headed off for his parents' house out by the ring-road on the western edge of the city. Just then he got a call from a regular customer, a guy who was staying at the Ras Adama hotel and wanted to visit a friend in the Piazza area. No time like the present to make a few birr, so John went to meet the guy. The guy's visit turned into dinner and John hung around for the return fare. No problem.

It was 8pm by the time John headed off to his parents again. He needed to deliver it promptly because another regular customer had a colleague arriving at the airport at 10pm. The airport is at the diametrically opposite point on the ring-road from John's parents house. A call came in from the customer. He had made a mistake reading the itinerary and the colleague was arriving at 8:15pm, 15 minutes hence. John sped to the airport.

Bole Airport was very crowded with people arriving for the New Year's celebration. John asked someone and found that the flight from Amsterdam had just arrived, meaning that he had time to wait before his passenger would come out of customs. As it turns out, she came out of customs very close to 10pm. Thankfully, she didn't have very much baggage.

Did you tell her you had a goat in the trunk?

"Yes. She was very surprised."

At 11pm, after dropping the surprised and lightly baggaged woman at her hotel, 6 hours after its purchase, John finally delivered the goat from his hot trunk. He called ahead so that his brothers Gideon and Emmanuel could meet him at the ring -road to collect the still live but par-baked victim.

Did the goat thrash around in the trunk?

"Yes, he kick," said John, "but then he get very quiet."

That's so great. He must have achieved some kind of goat-peace in the hours before his death. He must have been a very spiritual goat.

"When we open the trunk, we find his horns are stuck."

Oh.


• Kitchen goat


A month ago the Orthodox Christians had a 16 day celebration during which they fasted. "Fasting" means they don't eat meat. Then at the end of the holiday period they slaughter something so that they can gorge on the meat they've missed so much. Mahareg's family next door slaughtered a goat and the kids stayed there to watch. They witnessed the whole thing starting with a live goat getting stuck in the neck to bleed to death. Then it was decapitated, hung to drain, its skin was peeled off, and it was disemboweled. They watched Mahareg's older sister Mahadi attach the intestines to the kitchen faucet and flush them out. Mahadi then knit (crocheted?) the intestines by making a loop and pulling a loop through that loop then another loop through that loop and so on. She sliced the looped cord and cooked it up in a stew which the kids ate. John says you pay a guy 20birr to come in and conduct the slaughter. He gets the skin.