New Year Showdown…and sheep and digressions… and ellipses…PART 1

Last week, on September 11, Ethiopians celebrated their New Year.  Since the Ethiopian calendar is seven years behind the Gregorian calendar, they’re just now starting 2005.  So shhh…don’t spoil the Red Sox’ World Series win in 2007, Phish’s reunion in 2009, Charlie Parker’s reemergence (with Tupac) in 2010, the beginning of eternal world peace in 2011, and all that other good stuff.  But then, just as Ethiopia was getting all New Yearsed out…BAM!!!  God hit us with Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish New Year, which started this past Sunday night!!!  TWO NEW YEARS IN ONE WEEK!!!  DOES THAT MERIT A BLOG POST OR WHAT?!  The phenomenon seems like it also lends itself to a New Years comparison—or possibly even a New Years showdown—but I’ll probably get lazy and just talk about one and then the other.

Ethiopians often slaughter sheep or (more affordable) chickens for New Years.  Since I wasn’t about to pass up on one of the most quintessential encootatash (New Years) traditions, our Ethiopian New Years Eve started with a visit to the sheep market.  (Actually, my use of “sheep market” may imply that there was only one place to buy sheep in Addis, which would be totally misleading.  In fact, the city was filled with sheep in the days leading to the 11^th.  Every other block functioned as an ad-hoc sheep market, as livestock poured into the streets and complicated an already aggravating traffic situation).

We had planned to buy our sheep early in the day, but as per usual, those plans got postponed and re-postponed. Pretty soon it was “too late” to buy a sheep, at least according to my friends doing the selecting, bargaining, and buying.  Crowded spaces can be dangerous at night, and it’s also more difficult to see revealing sheep features—like the whiteness of the teeth (which shows age) and spine and tail size (which have something to do with the meat vs. fat ratio, I think). 

We eventually ended up buying the sheep at night regardless, and the market was nuts.  There were tons of sheep and people mixed into a small grassy strip next to the side of the road, with rush hour traffic (which is like a six hour ordeal here) whizzing past.  The other foreigners and I stayed in the taxi to avoid getting overcharged, though our driver hopped out to help with the selection.  (Are there any New York cab drivers that double as sheep consultants?)  My habesha (Ethiopian) friends proceeded to inspect several sheep, buy a big one, tie its legs together, and throw it into the trunk of our taxi!  (The sheep-in-trunk was one of several modes of sheep transport; the others included tying live sheep to the top of cars or minibuses—a la Mitt Romney’s dog—and the sheep backpack, which I’m naming after this dude who rode a bike with a live sheep tied to his back).  Thus began my first experience—to my knowledge, anyway—of riding in a car with a live mammal in the trunk.  When we got to my friend Bayelgn’s house, we unloaded the sheep, tied him up in the yard, gave him some grass, and let him chill overnight. 

The next day we woke up early after an incredible night of dancing and New Years partying (more on that in the next post) and headed back to Bayelgn’s house.  He was adamant about slaughtering the sheep at 9:30 that morning, but we still waited at his house for about an hour since he was at church (another example of the looser conception of time here).  When Bayelgn finally arrived, he showed up with a butcher—I think he was also the shepherd/seller—who agreed to slaughter our sheep for free if we let him keep the skin, which costs about 50 birr.  (I asked several people what they do with sheepskin, but the only answers I got were that it’s either sold at markets of exported abroad).

The slaughter itself was straightforward and devoid of any ceremonial bells and whistles.  The butcher quickly wrestled the sheep to the ground, slit his throat, and bled him into a bucket.  The sheep kicked and spasm-ed for a while after the initial cut (mostly because of reflexes), but the butcher soon hung him upside down and removed the head and guts.  The butcher then removed the skin and was careful to preserve as much of the sheep as possible.  He set down organs and innards in bowls and even drained and washed the stomach.  The whole process took around 20 minutes and left us with several large plates of meat and a bowl filled with blood.  Finally, the butcher tied up our sheep’s skin, added it to his growing collection, and went on his way.

We ate the sheep later that day, and it was delicious.  There were a bunch of different sauces with sheep meat, which we ate with injera (sour, spongy traditional bread).  I don’t think I’ve ever had the satisfaction of eating meat that fresh, except for maybe fresh fish like 15 years ago.  And it really was satisfying; I had fewer reservations than might be expected, and I wasn’t too grossed out by the whole process.  However, I’m sure that quite a few people who read the last few paragraphs might be a bit grossed out by my not-so-vivid description of sheep slaughter.  So allow me to explain (i.e. finally make a point)…

In America, for the most part, we have no idea where our food comes from—meat or otherwise.  We just go to the supermarket, buy ground meat, and go home and make a burrito.  Or—for the cooking-impaired—we’ll go to Taco Bell and order a burrito.  For those of us who care more, we may check for “organic,” “farm raised,” or “grass-fed” labels, or maybe we’ll pay even more and go to an “organic” supermarket.

In Ethiopia, at least in my experience, it is nearly impossible to buy meat that isn’t organic, grass-fed, etc.  I’ve talked to farmers who say they wouldn’t even be able to afford pesticides if they wanted to.  Moreover, the country is landlocked, so the produce is just about all local (whatever that means)…even the stuff they sell at grocery stores.  (Though minimarts do sell Arabic brand pringles, and the Sheraton imports Scandinavian fish for sushi).

Yet it seems like the natural American-meat-eater reaction to Ethiopian sheep slaughter is to cringe.  Which to me seems a bit ironic because it’s not like the meat we eat in America isn’t killed.  In fact, the animals are raised with hormones and all this crap and are then killed in factory farms.  There is a huge disconnect—so much so that we become queasy when we see how a living sheep turns into food.

I’ll let the experts figure out agricultural policy, and I think there are more than enough people rehashing the debates surrounding vegetarianism and meat eating.  I’ll just say that if I’m going to eat meat, I’d prefer to know where it’s coming from…and that doesn’t just mean looking at a label in Whole Foods.

P.S. I know I have friends who know a lot more about food than me, so if you’d like to comment, please do.  And if the blog doesn’t let you (or makes it complicated), let me know, and I’ll look into it.

(That ended up being longer than expected, so stay tuned for PART 2 to read about the rest of the New Years showdown (the italics mean that you should pronounce the word “showdown” like an obnoxious macho-man sportscaster)).