A Day in Adoumri: Always wear your red shirt when visiting the slaughterhouse

One of the benefits with working for such a large, widespread organization is having the opportunity to see other parts of the country by visiting other volunteers.  Last Thursday, I adventured to Adoumri to visit Joe, another Agroforestry volunteer from my stage.

Adoumri is about two hours away from Sanguéré-Paul.  I managed to drag myself out of the house by 8AM, took the bus to Garoua, and then took a taxi to Pitoa with five other passengers.  Joe’s counterpart, Huseni, had arranged for a friend to meet me in Pitoa and give me a ride to Adoumri.  At first I was a bit concerned about how I would possibly know which strange man I was supposed to be traveling with, but I figured when I got out of the taxi at the carrefour, it was a safe bet to go with the only person who called “Maria” rather than “la blanche” or “Nassara”.  Hooray for having a real identity!  I hopped on the back of his motorcycle, and we set off for the bumpy 50 minute ride down the unpaved road to Adoumri. 

We arrived at Huseni’s house at about 10AM, was greeted warmly by his family, and Joe arrived a few minutes afterwards.  After chatting for a bit, they decided to show me the town.  Adoumri is a lot bigger than Sanguéré-Paul, with a population of over 16,000 people.  Now that I think about it, that’s still smaller than my hometown back in Massachusetts, but compared to Sanguéré-Paul’s population of 3500?  Wheeeewph!  When I asked Joe whether he lives close to the market, he replied “it’s about a 15 minute walk, so yeah, I’d say that’s pretty close.”  Chez moi in good ol’ S.P., the market is only two minutes away, as is pretty much everywhere else I would possibly ever need to go! 

Anyways, Thursday is Adoumri’s market day, and if there’s one thing that this village is known for, it’s the cattle market.  Every Thursday, cows come from all over to do their shopping.  I mean…what?  No.  Every Thursday, cows are brought from all over – not just Cameroon, but also Chad, Nigeria, and Central African Republic.  The herdsmen and their cows (and sheep and goats too) walk hundreds or thousands of miles simply because this is the best cattle market around.  Customers will come to either buy a herd of cows, or an individual cow, with prices ranging from 100,000CFA ($200) to 500,000CFA ($1000) each.

There must have been thousands of them, and as we were weaving in and out of the crowd, I was hesitant to take pictures for fear of accidentally bumping into a giant bull and consequently receiving a 3-foot horn through my head.  The pictures that I did manage to take simply could not capture the immensity of the market (nor the immensity of some of these cows). 

Cow butts.

The pen where all the unsold cows will sleep after the market, with their herdsmen sleeping outside around them, resting up for the next leg of their journey.

I saw every single part of a cow that I had never hoped to see – from the icky male parts (this thing is beyond proper terminology.  I think I am scarred for life) protruding from a bull as he tried to sexually assault a poor non-consenting lady cow in broad daylight (his herdsman promptly whipped him and told him to cut it out), to the buckets-full of undigested grass that was pulled from a cows stomach after he met his death. 

That brings me to our next activity:  the slaughterhouse.  Let me tell you, folks:  slaughterhouses are not for the weak-stomached, or for vegetarians, or probably anyone who still likes Disney movies (not that I can think of any Disney movies that have cows in them, but I assume that if you still appreciate animals that can sing and dance, you probably are not in the same category of people that gets a kick out of watching a creature get sliced open and chopped to pieces as puddles of fresh, bright-red blood forms around it). 

What was I saying?  Oh yes, the slaughterhouse.  As we crossed over the dried-up river to the “abbatoir”, I saw a humungous white bull (a 500,000CFA-er) being led by a rope, and putting up a good fight.  The poor guy knew what was coming to him… he could probably smell it in the air, and he was doing everything in his power to prevent the inevitable.  No such luck. 

I’ll avoid the gruesome details, and the gorey pictures that Huseni insisted on taking with my camera (if you are really interested, or perhaps if “Bambi” is no longer satisfying your entertainment needs, let me know and I’ll email them to you). 

Don’t get me wrong – this is definitely no PETA-ish tirade.  Despite my squeamishness at the slaughterhouse, I was not at all opposed to what was happening in front of me.  In fact, I was pretty darn impressed.  These guys, equipped in their brightest red shirts for stain control, knew how to handle a bull.  Within seconds of entering the slaughterhouse, he was down on the ground.  Within minutes, he was killed and being disassembled.  Within the hour, the next bull was being brought in. 

Not only were they efficient in their work, they were conscientious to save each and every part.  As the cow took his final breaths, young boys were rotating shifts catching the blood that spewed from his neck.  This blood would later be cooked an eaten (apparently it tastes like liver…mmm!)  As they pulled various organs out, I kept asking the woman next to me, “what’s that?  What’s that?” to which the response was more frequently than not “that part’s delicious!”  Even the brain is eaten.  The parts that cannot be eaten by humans will be cooked and fed to dogs.  The heaps and heaps of undigested grass, which I mentioned earlier, are used for compost.  The leather is saved to use for whatever leathery purpose, and the horns are kept by children or turned into artisan crafts to be sold in tourist markets.  Talk about maximizing resources!  

The cow's stomach before it was carted away to be emptied of the grass inside.

Omnomnom.

After Huseni insisted that we wander into the slaughterhouse and weave in and out of the meat, it was decided that we had all had enough.  After resting up and avoiding the heat at Joes house, it was eventually time for me to go home.  Huseni’s friend drove me back to Pitoa, I hardly had time to thank him for the ride before being thrown into a taxi to Garoua, and I was back at my house before sunset.

All in all, it was a good visit.  Despite how it may sound, I was actually really glad to have an opportunity to see the slaughterhouse and to see the massive livestock market – an opportunity to learn a little bit more about the lifestyle here in Northern Cameroon.  It also made me truly appreciate my own little village, where people buy their meat elsewhere.