About a goat

Warning: This post is a little more educational, opinionated, and serious than my usual post. It's also about a goat slaughtering (although not extremely graphic and I'm not including pictures).

Kenyans, and especially Maasai, love meat. Maasai are traditionally pastoralists who raise cattle, sheep, and goats. They are everywhere around here, but it is a very special thing to actually eat meat because it's such a precious resource. The staff (in this case Okello), try to find an excuse every semester to slaughter a goat for the students (mostly because they love eating the meat). The excuse this year was that the students needed to examine the four chambers that make up the ruminant digestive system (and a cow is too big).

Goat day was last Wednesday. We had classes until four and then we all trooped out to the yellow fever acacia forest to witness the slaughtering of the goat. I say all, but it wasn't compulsory and about half the students watched. There are a fair amount of vegetarians (myself included) and two vegans in the group, but some vegetarians watched and some meat-eaters abstained. I chose to watch for a number of reasons. I don't eat meat because I disagree with the way most commercial meat is produced in the United States. Not only is it crueler than necessary to the animals, it is also inefficient and unsustainable. The Maasai are being gradually influenced by Western and other Kenyan (but not Maasai) cultures and have started to change some of their land uses. Agriculture is becoming more predominant and the land is also being divided in ways that can't support pastoralism like it used to. This has also forced the wildlife (who compete with the cattle and shoats for grass) into smaller and smaller areas (like Amboseli National Park), so the land and its resources here are currently being pushed past their carrying capacity. Even given that, the livestock here is driven from "pasture" to "pasture" where they can eat their fill of their favorite grasses and mingle out in the open--it's as natural a life as domestic livestock is going to have. I also believe that part of the problem with the system in the U.S. is that we are so disconnected from where our food comes from. I ate meat for 14 years and last Wednesday was the first time I saw an animal being slaughtered for food. One of our staff members is Muslim, so he slaughtered it so that it would be halal. It was a female goat one of the students nicknamed Kilimanjaro (Kili) in the five minutes she was alive on campus. She was grazing on the grass right up until her throat was slit. She was dead within seconds.

I understand eating meat. I don't understand needless suffering of sentient creatures. I can't say I enjoyed watching any of it, but I'm glad I saw it. I do believe this particular goat lived a natural life, but I didn't eat any of her. Okello did explain the four-chambered ruminant digestive system, but I think the greater lesson was to show a group of American students of wildlife management how intimately connected land, people, and animals can be.

Thank you, Kili.