Killing Animals On My Behalf

What I am about to say may be offensive to some so allow me to tell you I am going to talk about killing of animals without much detail. I do know that to some of you this would be injurious hence the warning. There will be no physical pictures but I am going to draw a verbal picture with a little humor I hope….

When our friend in Pignon heard that we were coming to town the very first thing he said was, “we are going to celebrate”. My friend Philip has been trying to get me to visit his town for over two years. As with many Haitians a trait he has is persistence. Living in the country they live in, they need this trait. It is a difficult place to live and without persistence little would get accomplished. Hearing those words of “we are going to celebrate” I knew what that meant. We were going to eat a special meal. In Haiti that has always entailed killing a goat to eat. I instantly told Philip, we do not need to have a special meal we are bringing food to the people and we do not want to take away any from their mouths. The discussion that ensued was of course a losing battle on my behalf. Philip insisted and if I pushed the issue more I would certainly be offensive to him and his family.

I did not want to insult him or the family so I tried to put it out of my mind for a while but the thoughts of my last goat experience still does not sit well with me. To give you the summation of the last experience let me say that the hosts insisted I kill the goat we were to eat. I insisted “no” in the end I am so glad I did not. The manner that the goat was killed was by accident a slower death than normal as literally a butter knife was used to kill the animal. When all was said and done we did celebrate and the goat was cooked in a fabulous way.

I was hoping that I would not be part of that same type of experience in Pignon when I arrived. I wanted to celebrate not desecrate. We know the situation that Phillip is in, and in Pignon in general, so to take more food from them in my mind was contrary to why we had brought the planes of food there.

We had already sent in a number of planes from Santiago to Pignon for the community to share. There was another entity who we sent food to also but we found out eventually that he was doing unscrupulous things with the food so we stopped. Phillip has been faithful as have 99% of the people to whom we have delivered food .

A typical goat in Haiti costs around 1,150 gourdes (Haitian currency) or about 30 bucks American. I sure did not want Philip spending that amount of money on me. Goats are raised with the family and they generally treat it as a pet for a little while even allowing it in the house to sleep at times. Goats roam free and somehow or another everyone just knows whose goat is belongs to whom. This is one of those cultural things I have not learned yet.

After unloading the plane of supplies, paying the airport people their due and saying goodbye to our friendly pilot Samuel we headed to the house. When we unloaded the truck of supplies into the house it was already about 5pm and so we were ready for diner. Of course it was goat. Madam Philip had done a great job cooking rice, plantains and goat for us. The goat had some spice to it though, as many foods in Haiti do. Haitians spicy like food but not Dominicans. Philip filled my plate after saying grace and giving thanks for the opportunity to distribute supplies. There was no getting away from this one. I was eating goat. I really enjoyed the meal that is until the third piece of goat which Philip placed on my plate. Unlike processing in the USA there are not standards, no USDA grading to the consumer.

I just wanted to finish eating at this point. I was over worrying if I was going to get sick, if the goat been cooked properly, if the vegetables ok to eat, or was the water pure? I was ok with everything but then it all came crumbling down in an instant. As I bit into some cooked goat I felt it in my mouth. The goat had not been completely clean and I had goat hair in my mouth. All I could think about was spitting but everyone in the group was sitting around the table with me. Did my face already give away that something dramatically wrong was happening, did everyone know I was about to gag? Ever so calmly and professionally I continued to chew on the goat(hair) and took a big breath of air and swallowed. I felt like a cat with a hairball going down my throat.

As the evening passed I realized it was too late to do anything and I just moved on. I did not get sick but mentally I still have a tough time knowing I had goat hair on my banquet meat.

Coming up NEXT… the ugly chicken