Eid



A cow's blood is drained to the ground.

And washed.

I join in for a bit on the skinning of a cow.

The cow's head and legs rest to the side while the rest is butchered.

Kids play on a dead cow beyond a pool of blood in the street.

There's blood on the streets of Kumasi. There is blood on the streets all over the Muslim world today. Eid Al Adha commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son at Allah's request. At the last minute, Allah substituted a ram. So, now many sheep die each year. Cows, however, are the more popular choice of sacrifice among Muslims here in Kumasi. Samad, our couchsurfing host, estimates there are three thousand cows killed today in Kumasi. We have seen cows and sheep being gathered over the last week. Pick up trucks with cows in the back have been moving around the city. Herds have been in the streets. All moving to slaughter.

In a land where we think meat comes in supermarket packaging, it is refreshing to see a cow alive and then eat part of it in the same day. It is certainly more humane than any factory farm or slaughterhouse. But it still seems rough.

Annette and I are spending the holiday with Samad's family around the Kumasi Central Mosque. It is much like any other holiday in many ways. We start early in our best clothes (Annette's purple and pink Moroccan jalaba and my white collared shirt and gray slacks). We visit and meet many family members across multiple households.

We go to prayer at the Central Mosque, which is in the backyard. There are easily three thousand people there gathered in prayer, led by the Imam. Chiefs from the various surrounding villages arrive in procession, under umbrellas, accompanied by entourages. People gather with their families, organize themselves neatly in rows, lay out prayer rugs and wait. The prayer itself is no more than twenty minutes. We come up with red dirt on our foreheads. Then the prayer rugs are rolled up, greetings exchanged just like after church. Slowly people make their way back to the vicinity of their houses.

The streets are busy and festive. People greet and gather, clustering to the shade, sitting on wooden benches around the streets. Under a tree at the intersection behind the mosque, cows are gathered and tied individually. One beige brahma bull with six feet of horns is tied to a tree branch. Another is tied to a car axle inserted perpendicular into the ground. Still others are tied to other parts of cars made into hitching posts in the ground. The leashes are short, usually around the horns and then two feet or so to the car axle or tree. Not enough leash for one injured cow to lie down and take the weight off of its bad leg. Another has its rope caught in another bull's horns. For hours, it seems, we sit and watch the cows in their discomfort.

Then, throughout town, holes are dug. Or perhaps they were dug yesterday. But they are there. Two feet deep, two feet across. Cows are marched from the tree. One man in front holding the leash that leads around their horn or neck. Another with a rope around it's back foot. They slap, yell and whip to get the cow to move. Sometimes it charges. Sometimes it resists stubbornly. Children gather around and then run all directions when it starts to fight. Occasionally a cow gets loose and a parade of children and young men race the streets after it. But it has no place to go. So, five minutes later it is marched back down the road, its spirit slightly more broken than before.

When the cow reaches its destination, the men wrestle it to the ground and wrap its legs in rope. Some cows put up a fight which makes things interesting. Others go down easily, seemingly accepting their fate. With all four legs tied tight, the cow is pushed and dragged by its horns, tail and any other part a person could grab until its neck is over the ditch. Then its head is twisted by the horns to nearly 180 degrees. Its eyes roll back in its head slightly. Then a curved seven-inch knife that looks like a scimitar across its neck. Blood pours into the hole. It squirts with a hiss toward the children gathered. They scream and laugh and run back. With every last beat of the cow's heart, more blood pours out. A few final kicks. A moan. Some twitches. The blood continues to drain out.

After twenty minutes or so, the cow is then dragged to the center of the family compound. The head is chopped off and put aside. Then its elbows and knees cut, cracked back, and removed. Its skin is removed with a knife, some cutting and pulling. I take part in this. It comes off easily, like peeling back the skin of a turkey to insert garlic and seasoning. But, with a bit more elbow grease. The skin then becomes the plate on which the butchering takes place.

The two male butchers are systematic. They will do three cows before the day is over. The method is the same. The cow is bound, neck over the pit. Throat slit. Blood drains. Cow dragged to compound. Head and forelegs removed. Skinned. The last piece of skin to come off is always the tail. Cut open down the stomach, between the balls. Penis, testicles, liver, stomachs, intestines removed. At this point, I already start to smell meat cooking. Then a few swings of the machete to hack through the ribs. Slowly, it becomes several huge metal bowls full of meat. These are carried away to kitchens. One third is supposed to be given to the poor. The liver is always cooked first. By 4 p.m., it is ready. Grilled, well-peppered, served with onions, tomato, cucumber. It is the best liver I have ever had. I don't like liver, but it is delicious. Surely hunger helps. And not having eaten more than a bowl of spaghetti all day, I am famished.

It seems as soon as a cow is marched off for slaughter, a truck or minivan appears with a cow or two bound in the back. The cow is rolled off and out of the bed, crashing to the ground in a cloud of dust. Carefully and not precisely, it is unbound and tied to one of the car axles mounted vertically in the ground. Then, it too, is walked off to slaughter, one boy leading it by the horns, another with a rope around its hind leg.

Cows are brought in by trucks through Kumasi.

And unloaded by men.

Prayer at the Central Mosque

The Central mosque on Eid.