I walk the dirt path alongside the village road seeking out a friend . . . . Coming towards me are dozens and dozens of ankole cattle. The cows you see locally have long and lethal looking sharp horns. As I reach the road the cows surge toward me and I fall back fearfully. Massive bodies, sharp hooves and THOSE HORNS! Several men run around from behind the cattle towards my side, swinging their sticks and yelling to push the cattle back from me and back towards their path down the road. Christmas is upon us, the time for slaughtering is almost here.
Locally, Christmas is a time when you hope for the means for two things; to dress your family “smartly” for Christmas church and to eat beef on Christmas day. The cows who are now entering our village in a steady stream are a result of the need for meat. Typically a family here rarely eats beef. But at Christmas time EVERYONE aspires to.
The process begins at least a month or so ago as people gather money together for the purchase of these cattle. A single cow might cost around 300k shillings, about $150 American dollars. This is a huge price for the average man here, but there is a promise of potential return on this investment. They will eat a small amount of meat but sell most of it. A clan or family from a clan might go in together on the deal, then traveling in groups since they don’t trust each other. They travel to a place two days walk from here. Three groups will go out about a week apart. Each group will travel all together, sharing the journey. There they will find a cow market, and purchase from the many sellers who have brought their cows to this central location. The next day they will begin the process of driving the cows back home, there to be slaughtered on Christmas Eve. With no refrigeration, they will kill all the cows on the same day in a mass carnage carried out by local Moslems. As I saw groups arriving home yesterday it was hard to tell who was more weary from the journey, the cows or the men. But the men are triumphant, in some way, returning to their old ways of hunters, they bring the meat for their people.
The road is filled with the dust from the hooves, the shouts from the men, the sounds of sticks hitting hides, and the shrill yells of small children scrambling back from the road. Christmas is coming. We may not have loudspeaker Christmas music or plastic Santas or twinkling multicolored lights. But we have cows. So really we’re back to the beginning, Christmas as it began, 2000 years ago, with dirt, animals, and the smell of poverty and despair. All of this the welcome given to the King of all times and all nations, Jesus Christ.