Slaughterhouse Road 5

We made sure to get all the movies ready, food supplies stocked, and water bottles lined up. Like a good Boy Scout, we were prepared for anything! We had heard about the supposed “carnage” of Eid. In fact, most teachers made sure to leave the country before the day and advised us to do the same. Call us courageous or maybe curious, or even cuckoo, I don’t know.

Rumor had it that the sacrifices would commence at around 8:00 or 9:00 am. Kaya of course woke up well before this and was ready to begin “movie day” at around 6:00am. I was actually pretty excited for the day. Granted, I did feel sorry for the three cows and three goats taking up temporary residence in our garage, but come on, when do you ever get to devote an entire day to viewing movies?! Celebrating Eid was going to be fun!

Our movie lineup included: Cars, Toy Story and Shark Tale. (I also had the Star Wars movie, The Clone Wars) Being a big kid at heart, I was super stoked to watch these fine animated films. One side note, we have a fine selection of movies courtesy of the local DVD store. Anything you want for around a $1.50 each! They don’t always work and we have managed to miss a few endings, but seriously this is Bangladesh and you can’t beat the price.

Back to Eid. Sheela had no interest in looking outside and thanks to excellent planning with the volume way up, Kaya had not clue as to what was really going on. In his mind, the field trip was about to end for those animals. I guess, in a way it did.

I didn’t want Kaya to be scarred for life because of dying animals all over the place so I too was a bit concerned. In all honesty though, Eid was a bit underwhelming. We heard no crying animals and only saw a limited amount of blood. Not that I was looking forward to any of it.
The people were quite efficient with the whole process. I looked out at one point and saw a dead cow in the neighbor’s driveway. About a half an hour later it was gutted and people were removing various body parts, disassembling the beast. One hour later there was no evidence of any slaughter. This wasn’t true for every house though. I went out later that day and did see a few pools of diluted blood in the streets. It really was amazing that just hours before there had been probably a herd of cattle throughout our neighborhood and now there was nothing. The animals did not go to waste. I was informed that all of the meat was consumed and the various innards were consumed or made into shirts and shoes for Nike.

Unfortunately the slaughter wasn’t quite finished. Goats and camels were still to come. Yes, I wrote camels. They didn’t have any camels in our garage, but Kaya and I went for a run two days later and came across a pair in front of a mansion. In my opinion it was a waste, an ostentatious display of wealth and power that we so often see here in Dhaka. The poor beasts were clearly starved and no real meat could be taken from them. A simple case of showing off.
It was kind of crazy though, Kaya and I were just running along and suddenly he says, “Daddy, look, camels.” He said it like seeing camels was an every day occurrence. Monkeys, elephants, and camels… we’ve seen it all!

As you have already probably figured out from previous knowledge or by our blog posts, Bangladesh is poor. Up until this point we hadn’t see a healthy looking creature around. Sure, we would see goats, chickens and cows running free in the streets, but they were mere inklings of what they could be with some food. But now, where on Earth were all these amazing cows and goats coming from?

The answer, as I am told, is India. The irony of that is, in India cows are sacred and can roam freely where ever they please. People don’t tie them up, they just do their thing. Hindus selling them to Muslims for slaughter?! Talk about bad karma. Apparently, these cows somehow made it across the border with India and to the streets of Dhaka for sale and slaughter. In a country where corruption is ever-present, I dare say, “something fishy is going on here!” I guess it doesn’t matter where you are or what religion you practice, money talks.

When it was all said and done, Sheela and I debated whether or not the whole sacrifice/slaughter was a good thing. I argued that the animals were being used to their fullest and meat was distributed to the poor. She claimed that the people purchasing cows could better help the poor by either giving them the money directly or putting money into various local programs. Touché.

Interesting times here on the other side of the world. It’s not every day you see cows slaughtered right before your eyes. Well, I guess Kevin Lee might say otherwise. Have a great day and stay tuned!