We've been talking about it for a while now, and it is finally happening: we got a goat! Little Cena is only about two months old – he will be of a very tasty age when we serve him up at our going-away party in August. In the mean time, we'll take advantage of having a gigantic yard and no city laws about animal husbandry to learn a few things about castrating, raising and slaughtering our very own goat. Who knows when the next time such a brilliant opportunity might present itself?
How Cena came to land in our particular back yard is a somewhat regretful story. Cena was born in the community of La Garnacha, where we help out on an organic farm one day a week. On just such a day, Cena had gotten out of his pen and happened to wander into the building where we clean vegetables. He hopped around, climbing up on stacks of vegetables and nibbling on carrots, while our coworker Clemente tried to chase him out. After Clemente had chased him out four or five times and Cena had persistently returned for more each time, Davie took Cena in his arms like a baby and carried him back to his owner, Carmelo. On the way to Carmelo's house, Cena fell asleep in Davie's arms.
We had already been thinking about getting a goat for our despedida, and since Cena seemed like about the right age, Davie asked Carmelo if he was for sale. Carmelo offered to sell the goat for 700 cordobas – less than $30 – so we were pretty convinced to go for it. We told Carmelo that we just needed to build a fence around part of our yard and we would buy the goat the following week.
This is where the drama and regret creep in. During that week, as we found out later, Carmelo had sold the goat to his sister, Azucena, who wanted the goat as a pet for her two-year-old daughter. When we showed up on Thursday, Carmelo tried to convince us to buy an older goat instead, but Davie wasn't having any of it. When Azucena found out what had happened, she pulled Davie aside and told him she didn't mind giving up Cena and buying another smaller goat for her daughter. So it was that Cena very narrowly missed out on leading a long, happy life of prancing around a grassy field with a two-year-old; instead, he has ended up in our carnivorous hands.
But although this story will end tragically for Cena, there is redemption. This goat has given us an amazing opportunity to learn, and for that we are very grateful. Here is what I mean.
We've given a lot of thought to what a perfect way this will be to send ourselves off after our two years in Nicaragua. Here in the Nicaraguan campo, raising and slaughtering your own chickens, pigs, cows and goats is pretty par for the course. When little Roberto's second birthday rolls around, his parents are not going to go out and buy a package of hot dogs from the supermarket – no, they're going to go out and kill the chicken that has been running around their yard, laying eggs for them since before Roberto was born. For every special occasion – graduations, birthdays, weddings, funerals – some type of animal is killed to feed the community that comes to pay their respects.
Davie and I admire this culture of eating meat from an animal that you have personally fed and nurtured and then ultimately, an animal that you have looked in the eye and brought yourself to kill. Meat produced like this is not only super-local; it also grants its eater a truer perspective on the full costs of eating meat. Davie and I have both eaten meat all of our lives; now we'll have to come to terms with actually killing the animal that we'll end up eating, and everything that that involves. Since this is a fairly common Nicaraguan practice, we think it will be a fitting challenge for our last few months in Nicaragua. And we will certainly have to depend heavily on our more experienced Nicaraguan friends for advice in every step of the process of preparing Cena for our despedida dinner.
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