I like hospitals!

Sun 16th October 2011

Well what a night we had last night, party, party, all to celebrate the killing of our goat! On Thursday, a lady arrived at the hospital with a little boy pulling a goat on a short rope, asking for ‘Anne’.

It was the sister of one of my patients (a paraplegic soldier injured on a mission in the civil war) - it was to say ‘thank you’ and to greet Ian. They did the same thing last year; it is so kind of the family, as they could do with the protein more than us. She explained it is their custom in their tribe (not Dinka) and wanted to give the goat.

So Ian and I left the hospital that evening with our goat leading the way, bleating for its family. Meat is a rarity here, so we decided to invite the whole compound and the Sisters and Brothers.

Now, to be honest, it would have been very nice to have gone into a butcher and chosen the beautifully prepared meat and taken it home and cooked it in the oven, BUT we are in South Sudan!

When we arrived back at the compound we had to find somewhere to tether it so at least its last few days on this earth it would be able to eat grass. The gate keeper tells us there are hyenas around, so we better put it for the night in the chicken house and he will let it out in the morning.

The next step was to find someone who was willing to kill, skin and cut it up on Saturday morning. The two gate keepers seemed willing after a small payment was made. Lots of middle men here!
Next find fire wood, as cooking a whole goat on our cook’s little kerosene burner would be an impossibility. Two possibilities here, pay someone to go into the forest to cut some wood or purchase it from ‘the poor and blind’ compound down the road (who also get it from the forest (mostly mahogany wood!). The latter seemed the best option.

OK, we have the live goat and some firewood. Who is going to cook it? A little persuasion and the 3 cooks in the compound all say they will help as long as they can have the goat skin, head and any other bits we don’t want + a little extra cash (the skin is used to carry babies in, a bit like a papoose or a billum). What a bargain!

BUT, what else do we need? Cooking oil, onions, beans, rice, tomato paste, ungali (maize flour mixed with hot water). It makes a stiff paste that tastes of nothing but stodge, but it is great for soaking up the gravy of a goat. All the above ingredients we were able to get in the market, in fact that is all there is in the market!

As for vegetables, someone said they could get some pumpkin leaves, which when cooked taste like hairy spinach. Perfect, all sorted!!

We all were at work on Saturday until about 3pm, but I did manage to quickly visit the compound around 11am. The deed had been done, the goat was no more.
One of the cooks was painstakingly washing the intestines out then turning them inside out and cutting them up in to small pieces to go in the pan with onion and tomato paste to make the gravy. Sometimes better not to see these things!!

It was a beautiful evening, the African sky was full of stars and the moon shone very brightly. It was a good job as we only had 3 small candles for the tables.
We took one table from each dining room and joined them all up. There were so many dishes on the table, and some of the goat had been barbequed too, so that was another big plate.
The Sisters arrived with a Mapuordit version of fried rice which was delicious, and the best fresh fruit salad you can imagine. It had the first pawpaw of the season and lots of guavas, just so refreshing.

Everyone had to bring their own plate and fork, in quite short supply here.

There were 30 people there from 12 different nations. We ended up with 4 extra as we had had trouble with the new water system at the hospital, so the technicians from Rumbek joined us too.

It was great, we had a song from every country, the Aussies of course ended up singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ we had Gospel singing from Kenya, rap from Uganda, singing & dancing with beating sticks from Sudan, and folk from Malawi. It was a night to be remembered, so many countries joining together to eat, sing and dance and not a drop of alcohol between us.