Read Online Reunion in Barsaloi by Corinne Hofmann - Free Book Online

and says: ‘Come and watch. It’s your goat!’ I know it’s an honour for a woman to attend and don’t show my feelings as I watch the killing ritual. Papa Saguna grabs the animal by all four legs and throws it onto the ground on its side. Immediately Lketinga puts his hand around its nose and mouth to cut off its air supply. The animal writhes and jerks in its attempts to free itself, its stomach heaving up and down. It seems to me to take forever. Thank God it’s already dark and the only light is from the moon. It is a Samburu tradition that no blood should be spilled before the animal is dead.
    While they’re suffocating the animal silently, life all around goes on as normal. A few children are running after kids while others are watching the slaughter. At last the goat stops struggling and Papa Saguna calls on Shankayon to fetch a sharp knife and a bowl. He whets the knife on a stone and then with a practised hand slits the animal’s throat. Immediately the blood gushes forth and the bowl underneath fills slowly with thewarm liquid while the goat’s head is tipped backwards. The animal’s yellow eyes stare lifelessly at the heavens.
    Lketinga asks teasingly if I want to drink some of the blood. I say thanks but no, so he offers some to Klaus who’s already seen more than enough. James takes the bowl away and in the darkness I can just make out two warriors going with him. I ask Lketinga why he’s not going to drink any of the blood and he replies, ‘Because I’m not a warrior anymore.’ He then throws the dead animal onto a sheet of corrugated iron while his older brother slices through the pelt along the stomach from the breast to the genitals with a single cut. The little girls help him, one holding a torch, the others a leg each.
    Now he begins to skin the animal, but for that he hardly needs a knife. With one hand he pulls at the pelt while keeping the body down with the other. Quickly and easily the pelt comes away from the flesh. I watch in fascination as the whole scene unfolds without a drop of blood being spilled. It takes barely twenty minutes before the animal is lying in front of us completely skinned. Now the belly has to be opened up and the intestine and internal organs removed. Papa Saguna sorts everything out neatly, laying the various body parts separately on the corrugated iron. I get out of the way as I remember from the old days how awful the stench is. After all I’m intending to eat some of this meat later.
    I join the others in the house to drink hot chai poured from the thermos. Little Albert runs off to hide behind his mother again and watches me with fearful eyes. James starts telling us how the locals in the village reacted when I wasn’t among the first of our party to arrive. ‘You know, most of them didn’t believe that you would really come back after fourteen years. And when only Klaus got out of the first car they thought they had been proved right. Here’s a mzungu , they thought, come to tell us Corinne’s not coming after all. But I calmed them down and told them you were just visiting the school first. Then I heard people saying to one another: she’s coming like a queen with two cars and two drivers. First just one car turns up and a white man gets out to explain things and set up a camera. And then she only turns up later. They all agreed: only a queen is moving in this way.’
    We all burst out laughing. I really hadn’t been expecting to be compared to a queen, although I was aware that turning up with two big four-wheel drives and chauffeurs was going to cause a bit of a fuss. Afterall, they only knew me driving my clapped-out old Land Rover myself. James repeats the story a couple of times, getting the same laughs each time. This afternoon he’d heard that even people who didn’t know me but had simply heard of me were excited by our visit.
    Outside, under the full moon and thousands of stars, there is nothing to be seen of the goat’s body. Instead