ladies and gentlemen...my goat!

a round of applause please, for the long and tedious journey of livestock purchasing in senegal has come to an end. that's right...the goat is bought, paid for, home safe and sound. i went to the weekly market this past sunday with my host father who decided that it was his tabaski good deed to help me out. so off we went, and once we got to the market he told me to go do my thing that he would come find me. so i bought my peanuts, beans, and bananas for the fam and myself some fatayas for breakfast (fried bread with onion sauce. sooo tasty. the lady also gives me a little one for free.) once i finished eating, there he was waiting for me. "okay, so there is a good goat. sixteen mille (about 35 bucks). let's go look and if you want, you buy it". done and done. so we go over to where all the herders are with their goats and sheep for sale, he points out a pretty little number and i hand a herder named ba sixteen mille. goat. check.

so my host father brings my goat home (apparently i own the goat but i don't have to do anything to actually care for the goat...that's what family is for...) once home my host father and uncle explain that their herd of goats is on the island including a nice big billy goat to you know...so they assure me that the next day they will take her to the island to go hang out with the other goats and in no time at all i'll have two goats. but first, i had to 'mark' my goat. thinking i could just whip-up a nifty necklace for it, but nope. mark means brand. so i got to come up with my own brand and take a hot iron to my goat. not exactly what i wanted to do my first day with my goat but hey...when in africa.

i'm pretty stoked about the goat. to be quite honest i didn't think i would actually get my goat at all...after attempt after attempt and attempt...discouragement was settling in. but things work out. i even found out that the little sheep i tried to take care of way back when is still alive and growing. during my second month in the village one of our family's sheep had a baby and then died. being the animal lover that i am i took the little lamb under my wing and fed it some milk as an attempt to keep it alive. however, one weekend i went away from the village and came back...the sheep was gone. my family told me that it went over to the island. i took that for the standard "it's gone to the sheep farm in the sky" routine. a little hurt, but nonetheless it happens all the time here. well, apparently i need to take things a little more literally. they actually meant they took it to the island (to go live with the other sheep. literally).

sometimes i think all i'm good for in the village is to humor everyone with how dumb and naive i can be.

but at least i got my goat.

cheers!
jaime