Meet Your Meat

While American readers of this blog may have a hard time imagining life in Cape Verde, rest assured that the sentiment goes both ways. Cape Verdeans also find the idea of an American lifestyle mind-boggling and even a bit worrisome. One major source of incomprehension relates to the production of food.



One day as I paused to take a picture of a donkey, a 5th grader approached and wanted to know what I found to be so interesting about the animal. “Very few people have donkeys in America,” I explained, “so I’m not accustomed to seeing them. I think they’re cute.”

He found the idea of sparse donkey ownership troubling. “Then how do people carry water to their homes?” he asked. “How do they carry back their harvests from the fields?”

I explained that almost all houses have water that comes to them in tubes, and most people don’t have land to farm.

This bit of information was far more upsetting- most people don’t farm. “Then how do they eat?!” he demanded to know.



Scott had a similar conversation with a gentleman who works as a Forestry Guard with the Ministry of Rural Development – our ‘employer.’ Scott showed Titino a photo of the house where he grew up.

“Look at all that grass!” Titino said of the yard. “That’s great for the livestock.”

Scott agreed that it would be great for livestock, but that his family and neighbors didn’t have any.

“But they cut the grass,” he observed. “What for?”

This was a little tricky to explain. Scott told the gentleman that people just like the look of it. They plant the grass and water it and frequently cut it just because they think it looks nice.

In Titino’s mind, this practice seemed like a waste of fertile soil. The natural question to follow was, “And where do they grow their food?”



Having now experienced closer proximity to the sources of our food, Scott and I have learned important lessons about its value and gained a deeper respect for its production.

On New Year’s Day, we ate one of our goatlettes.
I know that admitting this will probably spark an unpopular reaction, but I don’t feel sorry for what we did, and you shouldn’t either.

At the end of October, our goat birthed Howie and Saul, two male kids – a bit of an unfortunate break, really. Male goats serve little purpose in the local circle of life. Since you only need one he-goat amidst many a lady goat to ensure future generations, additional males are just more mouths to feed- extra hours cutting grass with a hand scythe. It pained Scott and me to know that our baby goats were destined for the dinner table, but it was a reality that we accepted on the day of their birth.

While it may seem cruel that we killed and ate an animal that we had held in our arms, petted, and played with, when it came down to it, we felt like it was the right thing to do. Saul would be killed, it was inevitable. If not by us, by another consumer less likely to appreciate the full value of his meat. It’s a bit hard to explain how we thought of the meal that the goat would provide as a special thing, a sacrifice. Although we didn’t take Saul’s killing lightly, we didn’t feel like we were doing a bad thing either.



The day that we killed and ate our goat was a special day with friends. The stew fed more than 20 people and felt like a feast. We provided the meat, and Eliza and Jose provided the seasonings, rice, and vegetables. Guisado is delicious in any context, but this time it also represented the daily labor that Scott had devoted to raising our goat and the shared partaking of a gift of value. Since our friends knew that we felt somewhat pained at killing our animal, they appreciated the offer of its meat as something special as well.

Scott and I have learned many things thus far during our Peace Corps experience – some of future value and others that we must immediately disregard upon return to America (such as efficiently spitting fish bones on to the floor during a meal). Learning to appreciate the value of our food, however, is a lesson that I hope will stick with us.