Surprise Parties

In the US, when we hear “Surprise Party”, we generally think of an unexpected birthday party which begins by people jumping out from behind your furniture and shouting in unison the emotion that they’re expecting you to feel.

“Surprise!”

Ours began with a goat. 

We were new in the town, one week, to be exact, and we’d just moved into a new and unfinished house. Between the 105’ days and the exhaustion of trying to learn a language and culture and assimilate a new team, we were pretty beat that moving day. It was that afternoon that our friends called us and announced it. In an extremely generous turn of events, their local friends had purchased us a goat, and “SURPRISE!” we were hosting a party!

One of the singular benefits of living in a place where party food is purchased live, is that when the need arises to postpone a party, it’s not all too catastrophic. They would house and feed the goat, they said, and we could put the party off two days in order to get on our feet. This included purchasing several large party platters, learning that the party would be hosted at a friend’s house, and figuring out how to explain that while we graciously accepted the goat, it was not to be killed in sacrifice.

The day of the party arrived, as did a cute, hobbled goat, seven local friends, and the eleven on our team. We were ushered into the backyard to witness the death of the goat, in its full, gruesome glory. The custom here is to kill animals by letting them bleed out, which leads to a fairly dramatic slaughter. Once dead, the goat required every hand present for its skinning, quartering, and cleaning. Having some experience with the cleaning and braiding of intestines, I jumped right in.

Lunch couldn’t be served until we had washed the stomachs (goats have four) and liver and cooked them as an appetizer. Adding to the surprise of my surprise party, I learned that we would consume every single part of the goat save the gall bladder, the hooves, and the skin. Pancreases, in case you’re wondering, have very much the texture you might imaging based on the diagram from your 9^th grade text book. We helped make green sauce, consisting of meat, onions, and pounded okra, cucumber salad, custard, esh (millet dough), red sauce, consisting of tomatoes, all the extra innards, meat, sweet potato, and onion, and grilled goat chops. All the food was piled onto platters, separately for men, woman, and children, and served up as the afternoon faded.

I learned a few more surprising things at this surprise party. I learned that there are a few rules of etiquette to sitting on the ground around a common platter and eating off it with your right hand. I learned that you eat all the sauce out of a dish before you agree to go for the meat. And I learned just how much laughter, joy, and friendship there can be, even when there isn’t a shared language.