texas

2011/01/20 texas

Been back at site for a few weeks now.  Im in Fianar for a bit to hopefully find some more powdered milk and do some work for PC.  Check out my Picasa and my facebook for a bunch more photos and videos.

 

When I arrived back at site earlier this month I decided to be a better volunteer for the new year and try and integrate more/hang out with Malagasy people more instead of doing paint by numbers by myself in my house.  One thing led to another and I invited myself to go to market with my landlord on market day.  When she was ready to go she called me down and she had two pousse pousses (rickshaws essentially) waiting for us to take us there.  So I had my first pousse pousse ride.  I had been avoiding it for a while because it is really vazaha/touristy for me to ride them and I am trying to not be that.  That aside it was really nice not to have to walk the few k there and back from market, especially with all the stuff we ended up buying that day (avocados are coming into season now…).  Towards the end of the day she (my landlord, or if you are a PCV reading this I am talking about ms. gold tooth) asked me what else I needed, I told her I just needed to pick up a little bit of meat before we headed back.  She said okay and that she needed something to do with cows and I thought she needed meat too.  So we went to one of her stores by market to see what was going on and ended up recording a radio interview about her new house??  I am never 100% sure what is going on ever.  But she sent her husband to go get us lunch (uh which ended up being napoleons??  Weird choice…) and then she beckoned me and we went to do the cow business that I was confused about.  What we did was… go to the bull market and buy three bulls.  I was in a giant desert field of angry, uncastrated, hungry and scary bulls, and a few little ones and some cows too.  It was a really scary few hours.  But it was really official and really shady.  The way people bargain for the cows and how they pay each other for them is kinda shady and secret, but the cows themselves are really official.  In order to be able to move a cow out of the town it has to have a government “passport” in the form of a yellow tag on its ear and lots of stamped paperwork.

 

My landlord bought the cows because she was having a housewarming party for the new building they finished out in the countryside.  It is tradition for most events to kill a zebu and eat it up and then give out the rest of the meat to all those that attend your festivities.  So I helped purchase, slaughter and dispose of a cow within a window of 48 hours.  I feel dirty.

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