One more person, one less goat (QUEASY BE WARNED)

Today...was long.
School was school. I missed my first class helping Aaron with the seemingly interminable visa process, which is now, thankfully, up to the interview stage.  The second and third lessons included the regular mix of frustration and small victories, and the few ambitious girls in the front row continue to drive me forward in my attempt to teach a third language in a second.  Today also included the arrival of another volunteer, which brought the muzungu count to 6.  A big change from two weeks of just a pair of us!  Fun fact: All three lone travelers here are current or former religion majors.

Preparations were also under full swing for tomorrow's bar mitzvah--I spent a good hour with at least ten community members and guests poring over pans of rice, removing small pebbles and pieces of grass before the massive quantities will be cooked and served to the community.

Probably the most fascinating part of the day, however, was my first ever witnessing of the shechita (ritual slaughter) done here.  There are a few community members trained to ritually slaughter goats (more for chickens, an apparently easier task), knowledge gained from rabbis who've visited the community and Rabbi Gershom, who learned to shecht while training in the U.S.  The killing is done underneath a tree in a leafy area--better to soak up the blood--with one swift cut (with specified parameters as to they sharpness and quality of the knife, the required blessing, etc.) and the animal is held down as it bleeds out, after which it is hung by its legs from a tree and skinned and emptied.  Various organs (including the lungs) are checked to make sure they are not blemished in a way that would make the animal treif (simply put, not kosher), and after the meat is separated it is salted.  Shortly thereafter, it is roasted, several feet away from where it was killed.  Cooking right away is the safest way to ensure the animal is edible, as refrigeration is limited and keeping a dead animal around, as many market stalls do, does not do wonders for quality.  The whole process, from knife to spit, takes about an hour!

To be honest, the process was a lot less gruesome and disturbing then I expected.  While I have sometimes half-jokingly called myself an "aspiring vegetarian," and while I know that kosher does not in any way mean humane, this particular process, from the way the goat was raised (free to graze where it pleased and on what it pleased) to the killing itself seemed to be the most ethical way one could use an animal for food.  Though I'm not eating the meat here, my current thoughts lead me to believe that if animals were kept and ritually slaughtered this way in a marketable fashion in the U.S., that would make me feel a lot less guilty about the hamburgers I can't seem to give up.