Got Milk?

Well the widows that I work with sure do. Last week I made the trek to Masaka (a town about 120 km from mine) to visit a progressive small farm and to purchase some dairy goats. I went with Musabe and Asiimwe....the Innocents. It was an absolute blast! We went on Thursday, stayed the night in a hotel complete with TV, HOT water, and huge beds! I think they were in their glory...they also discovered I had a video camera and felt it necessary to make some movies, including a music video...

We stayed up really late dancing to music videos and trying to get artistic with my camera (apparently we aren't so good at it). We woke up the next morning fairly early as we needed to pick up the goats. Now my original plan was to buy 10 goats and bring them home in the organisations truck. Unfortunately when I went to leave from home the keys were MIA. I looked and looked but could not find them...time for Plan B. Okay now Plan B involves using the new Suzuki Escuido...now I don't know if you know what a Suzuki Escuido is but it is relatively close to the little red Tracker my sisters and I used to drive....slight larger and with 4 doors but we are talking 10 goats here. So I show up at the farm to pick the goats and the man tells me he has my THIRTEEN goats just over there. 13???? Apparently we had a misunderstanding and due to some reasons (that aren't really important here) I needed to take all 13. Ok so I was worried about 10 but 13? Did I mention that it is pouring rain and these goats are really muddy and really wet? Well they are! We didn't waste any time and started to pile in the goats...usually I use that as a figure of speech but this time it is quite literal. Somehow we managed and all 13 goats were in my car (there's always room for more right?).

Please don't forget we are now 3 grown men who must squeeze into those 2 buckets seats in the front of the car. The guys took turns straddling the gear shifter and sitting on the storage compartment in the middle. We still managed to sing and dance the entire way home....despite the awful smell (after a few hours 13 goats aren't gonna wait for a pitt stop to do their business), the incredible amount of humidity (13 wet goats are sure to make a little moisture) and empty stomachs (13 dairy goats pretty much cleaned out my pocket book and we had to skip breakfast).

We made the entire trek back to my town (120km) plus out to my area of work (another 25 km) taking about 3 hours and then we took a supper break (for the goats obviously).

Then we started to distribute the goats. My women and children were so incredibly happy as they have been waiting for these animals for quite some time now. I will head out next week and do some thorough health checks on each animal which will keep me busy.

Needless to say my car was an absolute distaster and can't put "Carrying 13 goats in a Suzuki Escuido" on my "Top 10 Best Ideas" list but as usualy it was an adventure. Still hoping to get in my car and not feel like I have just been peed on by a goat but not getting my hopes too high.