Since the trip was taking so long, the truck manager decided to feed the passengers.
He bought a goat from the villagers.
I wanted to watch it being slaughtered & had to explain how I had gotten to be so old
never having seen a goat being slaughtered before.
I explained as best I could about supermarkets and packaging
in our mutually primitive French,
nodding, pointing and drawing pictures in the dry, crusty earth.

They wanted me to take pictures of the whole process which unfortunately I declined to do.
I did watch it all except I missed the actual slitting of the throat.
After the blood was drained, as is Muslim custom,
the body was opened & the guts were removed.
The intestines were carefully cleaned, cooked and eaten almost immediately
as a reward to those present for the slaughter.
Then the body was cut into parts. No part of the goat went unused.
Spontaneously, the passengers lined up at the end,
for a group portrait holding pieces of goat and pans of water.
That night we feasted on goat meat & a kind of desert bread which is baked
by burying the formed dough in the ground under the open fire used to cook the meal.