Goat Roasting...

Many little eyes, 338 to be exact, stare intently following the sound of the goats' screams.  The Headmaster presents the head boy and head girl each with a big goat with a string tied to its foot like a leash.  The excitement grows as the uncles lead the goats to the side of the school.  Definite squeals of thrill and disgust as the children have closely huddled around to see the goats being slaughtered and skinned.  

“Teacha look!! The goat still has milk.”- My Western thought: “Really?!?  Stop milking the dead goat. That is disgusting!!”

What is happening at LCH?!?

As a reward to celebrate the children’s great efforts and success at music competition in July, the school organized to have a goat roasting celebration.  

I won’t lie… I had a moment where I laughed to myself and thought, “Only in Africa would this be normal (and acceptable) fun.”  And fun it was.  The kids were so happy as they carried their big chunks of goat meat, hanging by a thin metal wire, to the fire to roast. 

As they huddle in three groups over the small fires we had created there were three main methods to the madness.  Some children were patient with the process, keeping their meat on the wire grill until it reached the perfect tenderness.  Some children didn’t feel like they had the proper angle, so they devised ways of “hanging” their meat over the fire by tying banana leaves to the skewer and lowering the meat down to the middle of the fire where the patient roasters could not reach.  And then there were the others who were salivating too much from the thought of this delicious treat and decided to speed up the process by shoving the meat directly into the fire.  Whatever the method, the result was satisfying.

Method 1 & 3

Method 2

Roasting matooke