Food Post #5: Local Meat

I will make a post very soon about local food in general, but this one is dedicated to meat! We have meat fairly rarely, about once a week and only a golf ball sized amount each time. However, that makes it more special and notable when you look at how meat is produced.  Maranyundo, for example, has its own cows, where we get our milk from.  A few years ago, a businessman donated some rabbits to help teach entrepreneurship and they have been breeding like…rabbits, so we have rabbit every once in a while too.  The only thing is, they just had babies and they are just about the cutest things, but I need to keep remembering they are my dinner and not to be admired or cooed over.  

These guys were on their way to Kigali to be sold at market.  Usually I only see chickens or goats strapped to the back of bikes or being walked along on a leash like a dog.  I was so surprised by this that I had to take a picture.  I was assured that the chickens were alive but most seemed pretty immobile to me so I still have my doubts.

 I can’t forget about the goats, which are used for meat a lot and I often see tied up to the back of bikes, bleating passively away, on their way to the table.  I also have to add that goat meat in Ghana stunk like a skink (I refuse to believe it was all in my head) but goat meat here just smells like meat!!  

Goats are not used for milk or any other product here since it is such a bovine culture.  Marcella, my American roommate, once mentioned that she had drank goat’s milk as a baby and that was followed by weeks of laughter (literally. It was brought up again at least twice a week). Eventually, it was explained to us that goats were used for their milk if you were too poor to afford cow milk or if you are malnourished. They could not imagine an American falling under either of those categories.

Chickens!  For full disclosure, my family has chickens and I think they are pretty disgusting, aggressive and mean creatures, but that doesn’t change how I feel about their right to welfare or my right to eggs! Chickens are mostly only used for eggs here (again, much more sustainable than using them for meat).  But once they can no longer lay they are eaten. But it is pretty tough and not that enjoyable.  I much prefer goat.  These are the chickens at the Benebikira Sisters’ Compound. Typically, they are only a few chickens for a household and they just wander around outside pecking their day away.

Let’s compare to how layers live in the American agriculture industry.

American layers: overpacked, no sunshine, terrible diet

Rwanda is obsessed with cows!  They raise them for milk and meat and their sense of wealth revolves around the cow.  More information here.  My background picture for my blog is actually a cow pasture just to reflect how well they live.  These cows are also at the Benebikira Sisters Compound.

They are always grass fed but by law, people are not supposed to remove their cows from their compound to help control disease, so people stock up on grass and keep them inside or close to home.