2005-01-09 - 4:21 p.m.

My enemies have returned and they are attacking when I am most vulnerable. When I left M’bedia, I had thought that the war was over. Atar is a large city and although there is a large number of animals kept by the people here, the ratio of animals to humans is much lower. In addition, most livestock are kept in compounds or pens at all times, so that they can’t get into gardening areas. Not that gardening is all that prevalent in the Adrar, however, with the novel addition of walls surrounding houses (something not seen in the south), protecting a garden is relatively easy.

My own house has such a wall around it. Inside I spend my days frolicking about, naked as the day I was born, singing nursery rhymes and tending after my many young Moringa trees. While on vacation my neighbor, M’barrak, who runs the corner boutique attached to my house, watered the young plants for me. Much to my amazement, upon returning home they were all still alive and well, lying against the Eastern wall.

There are three compounds adjacent two mine. The one to the east is a vacant apartment owned by M’barrak. The house caddy corner is owned by an old woman and her 30 something daughter with their subsequent children that spy on me from their roof as I try to peacefully dance in the nude. The compound against the southern wall is home to some 20+ goats. I’m not sure if I told this story before, but my kitchen lies against that wall, and that is the building I sleep upon when nights are warmer. Once, when I got sick in the middle of the night and couldn’t make it to the nearby bathroom, I puked my guts out into the goat compound hoping that some of my lost nutrients would help to fatten my furry neighbors.

Our coexistence was one of tentative peace. Sometime soon after I moved into my house I was doing my best to sleep through another 90 degree evening, only to be woken by the sound of drums hitting some sort of metal object. I quickly realized it was coming from the adjacent compound and, as best I could discern, one of the goats was tap dancing on a the metal roof of the man made shade against their southern wall. I threw rocks at the source, but no amount of quartz would appease the furry Fred Astaire. I finally had to retreat to my 100-degree bedroom and sweat my way through the night in semi-silence. On the next night I settled into bed, again on my roof, thinking that surly the creatures had gotten enough dancing to last a lifetime the previous evening. I was wrong. At 1 a.m. the goat began tapping away with new vigor, and I again retreated to the sauna in which I keep all my worldly possessions. This continued for 3 nights before I was finally fed up. On the final evening, with ape like abilities I scaled my wall and dropped into the neighboring compound to be greeted by a crowd of puzzled ungulates. I immediately spotted my tiny dancer who had actually been playing with another goat running up and down a piece of metal roofing that had fallen off of the shade. With a bit of force I lifted the metal vertically against the wall, and made a quick escape to my fortress of solitude.
For sometime after, nearly three months in fact, a quiet peace was maintained between my neighbors and me. They kept their floor routines on the soft dirt, and I continued throwing extra scraps of food, or projecting globs of vomit into their compound for sustenance. This peace has only too recently been broken. Now anyone who has spent any extended period of time with goats will immediately know what I am talking about, but for those of you who have not experienced this joy, I must inform you that goats are not restricted to the baa baa noise we were so efficiently taught by our spin-and-says as children. They have a vast arrangement of noises that they can make. The alpha males seem to be proficient in making the most annoying of these. My least favorite, which the male in my neighboring compound loves to bray repeatedly at 1a.m., 3 a.m. and again at 5, is close to a turkey gobble. Just take the pitch down a few notches and then raise the volume up 10 fold. I think it is supposed to be used to seduce mates. Unlike the tap dancing, a handful of rocks do have an effect and generally causes the gobbles to subside tell the next go round 2 hours later.

While this story may seem quite novel and funny, it has become a serious problem for me. As the goat does not speak English, French or Hassanyan, I cannot politely ask him to keep it down after I’ve gone to bed. His owner could really give a darn as to my sleeping habits. All this in addition to the recent infestation of mice in my house has caused me to consider moving out of my apartment. The problem is I have already invested a considerable sum of money into the place. In addition, both of my host families live less than a block away. I’m not really sure what to do, and my only hope is for a Tabaski miracle. Tabaski is the Islamic holiday that celebrates God replacing Abraham’s son with a goat when he was asked to sacrifice him. Every family slays a goat for the feast, and I can only pray that the gobbling male next door is among the victims. If not I will either be forced to find new residence or have a private Tabaski feast of my own while the owner is away.

previous - next