by Julie Powell
One of the men picks up a longish stick, which has been shoved into the pen’s thorny fence for safekeeping, and uses it to vigorously stir the blood in the gourd, for several minutes. When he lifts the stick back out again, it’s covered in thready red goop, like meaty cotton candy, I suppose whatever solids there are in the blood. He hands it to a small boy, who begins eating the stuff off the stick with relish.
“Sometimes kids don’t like the blood, so we give them this to get them used to it. It’s more like meat.”
“Uh. Okay.” Well, so much for universality and Buffy. I guess this right here is what you call an unbridgeable cultural gap. Because that is just irretrievably nasty.
Kesuma’s wife brings tin cups out for all of us adults, and each is filled about halfway. We drink. It’s blood, all right. Salty and oddly familiar, like biting the inside of your cheek or having a tooth pulled.
Afterward Kesuma’s wife brings us more of the cinnamony tea in a pot. I watch a tiny boy, perhaps four or five, take one of the cups we’ve just been drinking blood out of and studiously clean it out by squatting in the middle of the corral, scooping in dirt and dung, and tossing it around in the cup before emptying it out and getting some tea. Ah well. I guess this is the sort of thing you have to get used to. I drink my tea.
Then we pack up some stuff and start down the mountain, me and Kesuma, Elly and Obed, Leyan and a couple more young men from the boma. We’re going to what Kesuma is calling the orpul, but I have no very clear understanding of what that is. I know only that they’re going to kill me a goat once we get there. The day is already hot, and the climb down into the valley is rocky and steep. I keep slipping and nearly falling, while Kesuma and the other Maasai go tripping down the mountainside ahead of me like a bunch of brightly robed mountain goats. I grab onto spiky trees, try to keep from breathing too hard, and just manage to keep up, sort of. The hike down takes maybe half an hour, and winds up in a shaded ravine—a creek bed, actually, though only a trickle of water runs through now, at the end of the dry season. Another young guy from the village arrived a little before us, and with him the goat we’ll be eating for dinner. It’s a white goat, serene, seemingly not at all discomfited to be here in this rocky, narrow place, surrounded by men with very large knives strapped to their waists.
For a while the goat just munches contentedly on a stunted tree growing out of a crevice in the rock as some of the young men build a fire and Obed and Elly unpack the considerable supplies they’ve toted down the mountain to make the mzungu woman reasonably comfortable—Western-style food in Tupperware containers, a sleeping bag, cooking utensils, and bottles upon bottles of water, one of which Obed forces on me now. I’ve yet to see an African drink anything at all other than soda or beer. The sun is strong, even though broken into shafts by the spindly trees and sifted through by the breeze blowing down through the ravine; it’s been a long walk down the mountain. I lap up the water greedily.
By the time the fire is built, on a little ledge above and across the tiny riverbed from the flattened-out spot, surrounded by thorny branches that evidently will serve as our sleeping area, one of the boys has gathered a large bunch of leafy twigs from downstream. They lay them out near the goat, who immediately turns to chew some of these fresher leaves. So it’s not pondering death, at least it would not seem so to human eyes, when two of the Maasai grab it, one man taking the two forelegs in one hand, the other the two back, and toss it to the ground. It immediately begins to squeal, of course, being thrown about like that, but the men have it firmly in their grasp and hold it down without too much trouble, their scarlet and purple robes flung over their shoulders, out of their way, revealing lanky muscles. Kesuma squats and grabs the goat’s head, holding its mouth closed and its nostrils shut.
The goat doesn’t stop thrashing, not for several minutes. Neither does it quit vocally protesting, attempting to scream and grunt through Kesuma’s muffling hand. The three Maasai chat among themselves, laughing, as the animal struggles.
The goats here are happy, I have to believe, fat and shiny-coated with the run of the countryside and no fear of their human keepers. But that doesn’t mean that death is not painful and ugly. The creature wants life, desperately, won’t let go of it for a long time. I wonder why the men laugh. I think it’s because no matter how often you go through this ritual, how inured you become to killing animals with your own hands, if you are a decent human being you still hang on to that slight discomfort, that bit of shame over causing such distress. I had not thought I’d be so affected.
“Why can’t you, you know, hit it over the head with a rock or something? Slit its throat?”
“The heart must stop beating before we open it up, so that we can collect the blood. The blood’s the most important part.”
Gradually, the animal ceases to grunt or jerk its head; as it does, the giggling stops, and the men grow watchful and considering. They squat over the animal, occasionally putting a hand out to touch the hide, softly, even tenderly, shaking the goat’s shoulder gently as if trying to wake it from sleep. They are trying to feel something in the way the flesh moves under their hands, I guess, some indication of total release. Finally, after some muttered exchanges, after a moment more of quiet, Kesuma releases the goat’s head. Its body is now limp; its neck seems boneless. They lift it onto the bier of green branches, rest it on its back with its head folded, like a swan tucking its head under its wing, and take their long knives from the scabbards at their waists.
One of the young men punches the dead goat hard in the stomach several times, ending each blow with a sort of brief massage with his knuckles. Kesuma looks up to explain, perhaps realizing that to my eyes, this pummeling looks a little harsh. “We want all the blood to be in the stomach.” Punching a dead goat to make all its blood go into its stomach doesn’t seem like a particularly scientifically sound process, but what the hell, these guys have slaughtered a lot more goats than I have. Then the three men, taking turns, begin to skin the animal.
I’ve never skinned a whole mammal. But I’ve boned out ducks and turkeys, and this begins to look a little like that. Kesuma makes a slit from the point just above the breastbone to the genitals—boy’s parts, it was a he—which he cuts off. Then on either side of the slit, using their knives and their hands, the men start working the skin away from the fat and muscle. There is very little blood; a trickle or two from a nicked vein. From neck to tail, the skin comes away, down and down toward the joints of the legs. They cut a line through the hide on the inside of each leg, right to the hooves. These hooves they cut off, like Josh would work off the hooves of pigs. Kesuma hands them to one of the other boys, who takes them up to the fire to roast. The rest of the men continue to work the skin off the four haunches, until the hide is connected to the animal’s body only along its backbone and at the nape of the neck. But the creature’s head is still on and it still looks very much like a goat—and also a little like an illustration from a particularly gruesome Germanic retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood,” with a small, mutilated body lying splayed on the tender pink cloak that was once its skin.
They take the leg joints off. Then one of the men breaks into the body cavity by pressing the tip of his long knife at the breastbone and banging down on the hilt with the palm of his hand until the bone cracks. They lift out the intestines, pale and still contained in their thin blue sac. They take out the liver, hand it around for each of them to take a bite of. Kesuma cuts off a piece for me to eat, which I do. It tastes much as I would expect, still warm, with a meltingly tender texture, like bloody cheesecake. There’s something about the taste that is a little different from liver I’ve had in the past, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. The rest of the liver he hands up to the guy by the fire.
Next he hands me a piece of kidney, which is… fine. Slightly urinous, but fine. Then some sort of greenish grayish glandular something; I’ll just go out on a limb and say maybe pancreas? Also raw. And rubbery. But I swallow all bits off
ered without comment. Now they have a tin cup and are using it to scoop up cupfuls of the blood that has pooled in the body’s cavity. We all wash down our bites of organ with it. I realize what I’d tasted about the liver that was different. Goat blood tastes different from beef blood, or my own. It’s almost… well, it’s…
“It’s sweet!”
Kesuma nods as I return the cup. He takes a big swig and passes it on. “That’s right. Sweet! Now, show me your hand.” The other young men are continuing to break down the goat into parts, haunches and racks of ribs to be roasted or stored to take up the mountain to their families the next day. But Kesuma takes a break to do a little something for me. First he cuts a strip of hide from the edge of the flayed-open belly of the goat, perhaps five inches long and half an inch wide. He holds it up against the back of my hand, the slimy interior side against my skin, snowy white hair on the top side. He seems to make a measurement with his fingers, then takes the strip away and, working on a flat rock, makes two vertical slits in it; at one end, less than an inch long, and at the other, a bit longer. He beckons me to give him my left hand again, and when I do he slips the larger hole around it, works the hide down to the wrist, and slips my middle finger through the small slit.
“This is a tradition at the orpul. The young warriors come here once they are circumcised, to learn about herbs and barks to use for medicine, and to kill a cow. Sick men will come other times when they need to get well. And this”—he pats my hand, which now has a band of goatskin around it, stretching up in a sort of upside-down Y shape around my middle finger—“this is like… like a good-luck bracelet. If you get one of these when you’re at the orpul and then you don’t take it off until you come back, or until it falls off, you’ll have good luck.”
I pet the soft hair on the strip that runs from my wrist to middle finger. The skin is still wet on the underside.
We spend the heat of the day doing nothing much at all. Kesuma and the others make new goatskin bracelets for themselves, sharpen their knives idly on river stones, watch over the meat they are cooking for our dinner tonight (I’m fed some more liver, cooked this time). What they are not going to cook tonight, they wrap in leaves and tuck on top of more leaves, within a covered hutch of brambles which sits in the middle of our sleeping corral or whatever you’d call it. Within the hide are several round, fatty masses, about the size of golf balls. “Tonight,” Kesuma explains, “we’ll stay up to protect the meat in case any lions come looking for it.” I’m ninety percent sure he’s kidding, or at least exaggerating, but I think I’ll take my potty break before the sun goes down.
In the afternoon Kesuma, Leyan, and I head up to the lip of the ravine to look for various roots and leaves and bark that Kesuma wants to show me. He is a strict teacher; he moves fast, expects me to keep up, as well as keep notes in the blue exercise notebook he gave me when I arrived in Tanzania. Lokunonoi is a bark used to treat stomach pain. The roots of the orukiloriti tree are boiled by warriors for a tea that makes them “bloodthirsty”; its thorny branches are used to build pens for the cattle and the protective fences around bomas. Ogaki is the “forgiveness tree”; you bring a branch of it to a neighbor when you want to ask forgiveness for some offense. You can chew on a branch of the orkinyeye tree to clean your teeth; it tastes fresh, almost minty. Most of these plants look to me very much alike. Most of them are thorny.
We ramble up and down the rocks of the ravine. I take notes, per Kesuma’s command, as he explains things to me and as Leyan collects various roots and barks and branches. It is hot and dry work. By the time we arrive back at the orpul, Leyan is loaded down, but I’m the one dripping with sweat.
The sun goes down quickly. I eat a meal of grilled goat ribs and drink the crazy-making tea, which, because I’m not Maasai or because I’m crazy already, doesn’t seem to change anything. A couple of Kesuma’s friends gather some more of the green branches on which they’d killed the goat—now parceled away inside its little meat hut, the hide and the cooked meat and the raw meat that’s been sitting out in the heat all day and the fat all bundled together, which seems to bother no one but me—and make a sort of bower for me to sleep on. We all lie down in the dark, I in my sleeping bag, everyone else just flat out on their backs. For a while they exchange stories and riddles, some of which Kesuma translates for me:
You are alone and slaughter a goat by yourself. Who is the first to taste the meat?
Your knife.
Perhaps the crazy-making tea did do a little something for me because the moment I drift off on the none-too-comfy leaves, I’m transported to some European city I’ve never seen before but that feels instantly like home, where Eric and I wander the tree-lined streets discussing whether to take in an art exhibit or lunch—and then I’m awake again, it must be three or four in the morning, and the men are all laughing and carrying on about something. I shut my eyes again and I’m in a bookstore, reading the blurb on the back of a book about D’s and my lost love, and D is there too, and he asks me how I could have not known? And it’s five thirty a.m., dawn, and I’m up for good, ready to climb that damned mountain and, if that doesn’t kill me, get back to Arusha and Kesuma’s house and a deeply necessary shower.
The hike back up the mountain is just as onerous as I thought it would be; within five minutes after starting up the wending, rocky path, I’m breathless and perspiring, and Kesuma has to fetch me a walking stick and get Elly to carry my backpack, in addition to his own. I’m humiliated, but Elly is kind enough to chat and flirt with me—he’s definitely flirting with me—and keep up the conversation when I’m too winded to hold up my end. He talks about his jobs as a guide and a safari driver. In a few days he’s going to be driving Kesuma and me on an overnight safari to Ngorongoro Crater. He’s also worked as a mechanic.
Which, as it turns out, is going to come in handy. Since about an hour into our drive home, past Monduli, we run out of gas.
The truck comes to a rattling halt on a dusty road lined with acacia trees. A ridge rises above us to the north. There seems to be nothing in the vicinity resembling human civilization, but cars do occasionally pass. While Kesuma hitches a ride to the next gas station, Elly endeavors to get the car running again, which involves, first off, siphoning a liter of gasoline from the tank with his mouth. (Turns out the tank isn’t empty, but the line inside doesn’t go all the way to the bottom.) He puts this gasoline in an oilcan that he straps to the hood of the car, running a line from it straight to the engine. If he’s trying to impress me with his derring-do, he’s done it. If he’s trying to make me very afraid of the perils of driving in Africa, well, he’s done that too. I give him my last bottle of water and promise to buy him a beer once we get back to Arusha.
“Least I can do,” I say as he spits mouthfuls of water out onto the pavement.
“Sounds good to me.” He quits retching long enough to give me a smile and a wink.
That night, we do get that beer. Kesuma insists on coming with us, to a pool hall down the main road between his house and the Arusha town center, probably to protect me from any improper advances. He wears Western clothes, the only time I will ever see him in such during my entire trip—a white button-down shirt and black jeans, which combined with his white beaded jewelry and dark skin make him look awfully hip. A perfectly innocent time is had by all, but I feel Elly looking at me. I don’t mind a bit.
I’M THE hippest white woman on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater tonight. I’d be hipper still if I wasn’t so delightfully aware of my hipness, but we’ll let that pass.
It’s nearing sunset by the time we get to the campground where Kesuma, Elly, Leyan, and I will be setting up our tents, and the place is fairly crowded, with touring Westerners, their Tanzanian cooks and guides, and the occasional zebra. We’ve had a full day, having left Kesuma’s house in Arusha some time after eight a.m. and driving first to Lake Manyara, a small park in a rift valley, about an hour from town. It was my first safari, and while I didn’t see any brilliant Bat
tle at Kruger–style kill scenarios—which is for the best, as I probably would have broken down like a little girl—I did thrill to the sights of elephants knocking down trees, families of rooting warthogs, wallowing hippos, and fighting giraffes. This last spectacle is a sight that, to quote yet another Buffy character, “puts fear in no one’s hearts.” Elly drove the Land Rover he’d rented for the trip, while Leyan and Kesuma and I stood up on the back seats to look out the pop-up roof.
I’d expected the sort of safari you think about when you read travel magazines and watch the Discovery Channel, led by an African guide in a pith helmet speaking into a microphone at a carload of tourists. “This is the African forest elephant. The tusks are longer than those of the bush elephant, and point downward…” But this wasn’t like that at all. This was like a trip to the most amazing zoo in the world with a few friends. We pointed and whispered excitedly at elephants lumbering through the forest, stared, amazed, at the enormous snake—eight feet long if it was an inch—that we caught sight of near the picnic tables where we stopped for lunch, laughed and cooed over the tiny infant baboons in their mothers’ arms. Afterward, on to Ngorongoro. On the way, we stopped for beers for Elly and me, Cokes for Kesuma and Leyan, at an outdoor bar next to a tiny open-air butcher shop, where halved and skinned goat carcasses were hung up against the wall like coats on hooks. Though Kesuma can’t drink, I took a picture of him holding my beer bottle, to much hilarity. We talked, I remember particularly, about blue whales.