't Is the Season To Be...... Slaughtered

The Eid is upon us again, here in Egypt. Imagine Christmas but then with the Christmas goose being so fresh that it has to be decapitated and plucked before you can eat. Same thing here but then with larger animals. Rams and ewes are a definite favourite.

Not unlike with Christmas I discover I need to buy essential stuff (in this case a new floater system for the toilet as it is running continuously, not very christmassy I know but what can I do?)just before or slightly after all the shops have closed. So after sunset I wander over the 26th July street, main traffic and shopping street here on Zamalek. All shops are closed but for food stores and kiosks, oh and the mobile phone shops. The butcher's shop on the 26th has strings of lights in all colours. It really does look nice, until you see the dozens of stripped and naked sheep carcasses hanging in front of the shop. The middle area of the street, covered by the fly-over and usually a fully packed parking area, now is home to dozens of sheep, milling around a feeding trough in a roughly made pen.

Sort of the before and after shots. Before; alive and bleating and woolly (matted but woolly) and after hanging upside down striped red and pink and very much dead.

I guess that around midnight the first of these live sheep will not be anymore.

In a more sickening manner, the Alfa Market, a supermarket catering to foreigners and rich Egyptians, has a small pen with a crappy and becrappéd piece of carpet. There, two little lambs attract the attention. Photos are being made, little children pet the nice little sheep. It's kinda weird, a final petting zoo. Fat chance you'll see those cute little lambs tomorrow kids. At least not in this shape and form and vitality.

Happy Eid all.....