Sunday, August 12, 2012

Eating Imbuzie

(Written 29 July 2012)

We arrived home around 9:00a.m., ready to move into action.  We were still tired from two nights’ holiday at Lake Tanganyika, but guests would start showing within a few hours for our Zambian Unity Day/U.S. Independence Day celebration, so there was no time to waste.  My sister Beth, who’d been in the country for two weeks, got to work sweeping the house while I went to borrow a hardier broom to sweep the yard.  Before I could start, however, I found a small animal tied to a tree: an imbuzie, or goat.  Or rather, the main course for our party meal.

My host father had procured the animal from a community member after a days-earlier bike ride into the bush with Beth and my counterpart yielded no fruit.  Or meat.  (One goat rumored to be for sale had died, another was far too small, and so on.)  My host father, having located a goat and brought it to me, had a trip planned for the afternoon, so he wanted to make haste in preparing the goat for cooking.

“Should we name it?” Beth asked, as the goat was led by its rope into my front yard, a lightly wooded area.  In moments, however, my father and two of my host brothers had the goat suspended from a slim tree by his two hind legs.  I went inside to procure a high-quality American knife and, for good measure, sharpened it.  Taking it outside, I toyed with the idea of wielding it myself, but decided to hand it over to my father, whose skill was much better matched to the task.  My brother Joseph and I held the head.  Which, as it turned out, was in itself a challenge.  The goat's cries as it was tied to the tree hinted that he may have been suspicious of his impending death, but the first cut brought forth the fight.  The knife was sharp, the cut clean and quick, but Joe and I struggled to hold the head still as the stream of blood rushed forth.

Should’ve thought to change my clothes, I thought, scooting back to keep the majority of my body as far from the red liquid as possible.  (My father had the good sense to wear easily-rinsed-off black rubber boots, the same I’d always worn milking cows as a child.)  Blood gushed over my hands, warm and smelling of goat’s milk.  There was so much of it, and it pooled in a bright red smear by the base of the tree.  The creature continued wriggling; my sister tells me I petted it and tried to calm its bleating.

Suddenly, the goat jerked: raised his head, arched his back, splayed his legs.  After a moment, he relaxed, then stiffened again, as though giving a final effort in his fight to resist death.

And then, the body fell limp, the river of blood ceased, and the goat was at last dead.

The testicles were cut off and tucked in the crook of a nearby tree.  The head was cut off as well, and then we began carefully slicing away the skin from the meat.  Bit by bit, gently but intently sliding the knife between the stretches of muscle and the thin fatty layer adhering the skin to it.  I folded the loose skin in my head so that I could grip it by holding on to the hairy side, uncomfortable with grazing my fingers across the interior side of the skin.  My brother complimented my technique and progress as more and more skin fell free of the body while my father worked on the other side.  Soon, all that remained was a headless body with hairy hooves giving the impression of stockinged feet on a stripped-clean carcass.

Next, out came the entrails, carefully removed and set in a large plastic tub.  The stomach was slit open, and a green soup of half-digested grass poured out on the lawn.  The spongy inside of the organ was rinsed and scrubbed until the water ran clear, as were the other organs.  My brother started squeezing small pellets out of a mess of bodily tubing—the intestines.  “What’s that?” I asked.  “Feces,” he responded nonchalantly.  Eager to embrace the experience, I also began gently pushing the small pieces out, softer and harder to move cleanly the further up the tube we went, so that the intestines could be rinsed and, like everything else, cooked and eaten.

The whole process felt much like a marvelously hands-on anatomy lesson.  While my knowledge of bones and organs is limited to high school advanced biology (shout-out to Mrs. Eickman!), and my memory not so great since that was twelve years ago, I couldn’t help feeling that its very core, a goat body looked fairly similar to a human one.  At least, many of the components are the same.

After the organs were disassembled and washed, the body was quartered and removed from the tree.  The rope was wound, and the men started chopping the meat into reasonable-sized chunks for cooking.  (For ease, we’d  decided to cook the meat in pots, rather than roast the goat whole.)  Meanwhile, I and my counterpart started sweeping the unwooded portion of my yard.  When the dish was overflowing with meat, my family asked if they could keep a portion of the leg for themselves ( a reasonable payment for the work they’d invested), fires were made so the rest could begin stewing, and that good American knife—now missing a chink thanks to hacking through bone—was washed and returned to the house.

I’ve always been a meat eater.  After participating in the slaughter of a goat, I still am.  There is something both ordinary and miraculous about the transition, however.  One moment, a bleating, breathing animal; the next, a bowl of meat, bone, and internal organs.  A body, not so different from our own, so complex in the workings of life, yet no more than a collection of a few parts once breath is gone.

It was a bit strange, having this animal die under my witness, and by my wallet, if not exactly by my hand.  Yet what is the difference between eating this meat and buying a pound of ground beef at Eich’s Meat Market?  Or a steak at Wellington Brown’s, for that matter?  Those of us who embrace  our  omnivorous nature must do so in full awareness of what it means to eat meat.  Those who find it unconscionable do right by themselves by becoming vegetarians or vegans.

But I’ve always eaten meat, and while Zambia has offered me the fresh perspective of seeing chickens—and now a goat—be transformed from a living creature to a protein source, I still feel pretty OK with eating meat.  I have deep respect for religions that acknowledge the sacredness of eating animal flesh by implementing restrictions on their slaughter, preparation, and consumption—Halaal for Muslims, kosher for Jews, for example.  While we held no particular ceremony as part of our slaughter, there was a fundamentally wholesome sensibility to the ritual.  This was not a meat-packing plant with conveyor belts and whirring machines, electricity everywhere running the butchering and water everywhere trying to keep things clean.  This was a quiet spot in my yard, quite like where the goat had been raised, with the sun streaming through the branches overhead.  The waste materials would be soaked back into the soil, further fertilizing all that grew—from death, new life.  My father and brothers executed the task with skill and strength, respecting the care and investment that it takes to raise a goat, respecting its financial worth.  (I paid K200,000, roughly $40, for the animal, the equivalent of the sale of four 50-kg bags of maize.)  While the goat didn’t serve as a religious sacrifice or anything deeply ritual, it was for  a celebration, a special occasion.  And since any meat, and red meat in particular, is a rarity for me and most village families, we shared an appreciation for the meal this animal would provide.

So, in a sense, we were in a ceremony of sorts, the same one that permeates most of village eating.  A respect for food, an appreciation for all the work (and divine providence) that are necessary for its abundance, a deep and natural connection to the Earth and all that inhabits it.  As the host that evening, I was so busy attending to guests that I didn’t actually take part in the meal.  Nonetheless, it was one of the most meaningful meals I’ve had a hand in since coming to this country. 

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