As It Turns Out, of All Living Creatures, I Like Helping Humans the Least

1/13/2009

Today I was leisurely starting my day by brewing a cup of hazelnut coffee. Yum! Yum! I was carefully determining the proper amount of coffee to milk ratio when I heard commotion outside. Initially, I thought it was a chicken getting into mischief and paying for it when I glanced up out of my kitchen window, and to my horror, saw my host father body slamming a goat down on the compound floor. He stepped on its neck, choking it. He stomped on its mouth and face repeatedly. Shocked, I literally couldn’t believe what I was seeing for a second, until I couldn’t watch. I spun around, threw my hands to my mouth and sobbed. I haven’t cried like that in quite a while. I walked into my bedroom and sat on the end of my bed so no one could hear me. I cried for that goat. That might sound silly to you, but the sight was brutal. Granted, it was a fully grown goat but so is my host dad and he was furious. I have no idea what the goat did to provoke that response, but that kind of abuse is unacceptable on any living creature. Now it did cross my mind to run out there and ask him to stop, but I didn’t because it wouldn’t have made a difference. First, he would have looked at me like I was crazy and probably wouldn’t have stopped. That is how animals are treated here and what he was doing was totally normal or at least acceptable. Anything I could have said won’t change this behavior, at least, not any time soon. Second, I was too late; by the time I could have pulled myself together, the goat would have already received to majority of the beating. So instead, I apologized to the goat through my sobbing breaths.

I keep thinking about our (humans) relationship to animals, plants and the environment, but animals mostly. I make it a point to greet them… if that sounds weird… as well as send them mental images or emotions. Anyway, this subject matter keeps coming up in books I’m reading. The most recent was The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. There was a quotation in the book that resonated with me enough to write it down: “True human goodness, in all its parity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test… consists of its attitude toward those who are at it its mercy: animals.”