The goat is dead

Sometimes you hear stories that seem suspiciously like urban myths (ok, perhaps not “urban”, but you get the point).

One story I was told a few days after I got here, was the one about the general who was swimming in the Nile and was eaten by a crocodile. Apparently he had a guard with him who was sitting on the river bank with a gun, but who did not dare fire at the croc in case he’d shoot the general instead. So the general died. I later heard the same story from different people. But reliable sources tell me that this is in fact a true story.

Another story is the one about the guard at a UN compound here who was swallowed whole by a python. (The ever-watchful local guards tend to “nap” at night.) But the python had not taken into account its fat belly, and was electrocuted during its escape through the electric fence. It was Flora who told me this story, and I took it with a pinch of salt, as we say. But my Norwegian colleagues in Khartoum had seen pictures of the dead snake in the paper. We do however agree it is more likely the python had a goat and not a man for its midnight snack.

Now, to my third Jubanese whadda ya know! animal story. This you might have read somewhere else, but I heard it from my roommate Margaret. It is the story of a man who was caught having …relations… with a goat. The elders judged that he must marry this goat. (The custom here is that if a couple is caught during pre-marital activities, the man must marry the girl to save her and her family’s honour.) So the man married the goat. Now, this story is also true, and confirmed by Birgit, who tells me that the story about the marriage was published with the man’s full name in the local newspaper – hopefully an effective deterrent for future goat lovers. The British reporter who first broke the story was in my office just two hours ago. Anyhow, the man and the goat lived, let us not say happily, and let us not say ever after either, for now I read on the BBC website that the goat has died. “She is believed to have died after choking on a plastic bag she swallowed as she was eating scraps on the streets of Juba.” Very sad, but perhaps she is better off in goat heaven where there are no Sudanese men and the goats can eat grass instead of garbage.

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(I'm now just two weeks away from my ticket out of here. Just a few more days before I start with the "this is how it's been and this it what I've learned. I've discovered I don't have to feel bad about keeping very close track of how many days I have left, because my more experienced expat colleagues do the same. Leif now has only "one week and two days" before he goes on leave, and Birgit told me a couple of days ago that she had exactly 50 days left of her contract. Sissel is more relaxed about it, she only counts how many weeks she has left (eight).)