Our Tales From Tanzania: Mother’s Day Goat Roast

Yep, you heard that right. What started out as a simple plan to go for a Mother’s Day hike turned into a full day affair of hiking, picnicking, more hiking, swinging, and goat roasting with some of my favorite people in the world.

Admittedly, I had a rough start to the day. There was a bike race for my brother on Saturday to benefit his Goyles. When I woke up Sunday morning, I read several posts about the race and how his teammates and friends missed him and shared stories about him. I also heard that his Nalgene teammate won the race and walked up to my mom at the end and presented her with his winning check – he said it was from the whole team because they miss him so much. Small gestures that mean the world. I also knew how hard this Mother’s day was going to be for my mom, as her first one missing a child, and for Kristin who deserves so much recognition for her strength these past ten months – the Goyles are doing amazingly well and it’s due so much to her example and her efforts to keep Mike a part of their lives. They both deserve Mother of the Year awards. The day could have easily been a dark one for me, but the kids gave me their homemade cards and somehow I came around and was able to focus more on the joy of how Mike is remembered rather than the fact that he is missing.

We were heading to Lengijave which is only about 30 minutes away on the way to Nairobi. Tierney had gone up the night before with Udine to their friend’s house where we were going (the rest of us stayed in Arusha to wait for Matt to come home from the US). It was gorgeous. It felt like we were much further away from Arusha. We quickly got organized with food and car shuttles to start our hike. It was almost a two hour hike from the house to meet up with the cars. I think this is the first hike where the kids were solidly in front of the adults the entire way.

We then hopped in (or ‘on’) the cars to head into an acacia forest for a picnic.

We found a nice picnic spot, relaxed (i.e. had some wine and chocolate), and ate for a while until the kids were recharged for walk #2. Most of us walked down a dry river bed to find a spot where the maasai had dug down to get to water for their cattle.

Next it was off to find a good tree to make a rope swing.

Now we were ready to head back to Gunter’s house. He had someone go buy a goat from one of the local maasai (about $50 in case you were wondering). When we pulled up to the house the goat was right there tied to a tree. Anderson was very curious about the whole process, and I think it’s great that the kids understand what they are eating and where their food comes from, so we let him watch the entire thing. He was amazing. The girls came down at one point while the goat was being skinned, but quickly ran back up to the house. Anderson ate an impressive amount of meat, and Tierney at least tried some of it, but said she didn’t like eating an animal that she saw alive.

I’m not a huge meat eater, but these guys really know how to grill the meat and it was really good. I’m so proud of all of the kids for checking it out, but especially for Anderson for his willingness to be a part of the whole process (and yes, there are many more pictures where Anderson is learning about all the internal organs, etc). He was very excited to write about this in his ‘weekend news’ at school this morning.

We finally headed back home after dark to clean off some very dusty kids (and adults) and prepare for another week.