The Slaughter of the Cow

This weekend is 'Festival weekend' in Cape Coast. The main event is tomorrow, but we were treated to quite a spectacle this morning. The ceremony of the 'Slaughter of the Cow'.

Back in the time when Cape Coast was little more than a village, a great plague beset it's god-fearing people. The plague spread far and wide, and in all the lands surrounding the village families began to lose their loved ones.

The people prayed, they sacrificed their goats and sheep, but it was all to no avail. Week after week the sick continued to die.

Distraught at their lack of power, the chiefs asked their great leader, the king of all the nearby lands, to try once more to commune with the god's and ask them what would bring peace. The King went away, and came back with devastating news. The gods were not satisfied with the sacrificing of animals. A man was to die, or the sickness would continue.

The Chiefs raged. How could this be? The god's had never asked for such a sacrifice before. But while they raged their children continued to die around them.

No chief was prepared to sacrifice themselves or their kin to meet the god's demands. And so, with heavy hearts, the cry went out to the countryside, for someone, anyone, to hand their life to the gods in exchange for an end to the sickness.

A lone voice replied. A voice in a tongue that few understood, an outsider, but a man prepared to put himself to the sword to end the death he saw around him. With the village looking on, the chiefs sacrificed the man, and with his blood came the end of the plague.

And so it is, once a year that the village remember the Outsider, the brave man who saved them all, many many years ago.

They remember him in style.

The chiefs lead a procession through the streets, dressed in their full tribal attire.

At the Front of the procession are dancers. (These video links go to our Picasa page, please do click through to them. Turn your volume right up for the true African experience):

Front of the Procession (video)

In the middle beat the drums - (one poor chap was so distracted by the camera he walks away from his companion!):

Drumming (video)

And at the back, well you'll see...

Getting involved (video)

Now the ceremony is not called the slaughter of the cow for nothing, and Lydia and I had front row seats for this gruesome spectacle. The chiefs gather while the beast is tied and brought into the pen.

The King blesses the animal with Schnapps, drinking a little, pouring some onto the beast, and some onto the ground. As he does so he makes a speech, fairly quietly, to the hundreds of local people gathering to see.

Now there's a space in the blog here for a reason.

DO NOT SCROLL DOWN IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED.






I'm being serious.



















































The king makes the first incision..

And within seconds it's all over...

Bizarrely the children of the town then lead the dead animal around on a cart, and at a rate of knots high enough to throw off all but the most hardened of photographers. Once you catch them though, they do love to pose...

This all happened at 11am. Having left the office half an hour before we were back before lunch to continue building Access databases and Excel trackers. Africa is truly awesome.

Tim & Lyd