I see no cows!

Until today I had never been to an illegal livestock market before. It’s not really the kind of thing you’d imagine taking place. A conspiracy of cows, sheep and goats. Entry on a strictly ‘password only’ basis. Shady goings on in the livestock underworld. It wasn’t quite like that but it was, none the less, an illegal gathering.

My descent into the criminal fraternity began innocently enough. We will, shortly, be building a goat enclosure so that we can give our Agriculture College students practical experience in rearing goats. There is a well know livestock market not very far from us so we decided to go on our first College field trip this morning to do some market research. I’ve blogged before about the appalling road conditions around our place. It was a bumpy ride. Once we got to the main road we had an unscheduled stop so that the driver of the matatu, (14 seater minibus), that we had hired for the morning could receive the first thousand shillings of the price we had agreed to pay him and put some petrol in the tank. Confident that we would, at least, make it to our destination we set off down a fairly decent road for the last bit of our journey.

It turned out that none of us was sure of the exact location of the market that we were heading for. As we approached the village and there were no obvious signs of livestock being herded in the general direction of a market I became concerned that we had either come on the wrong day, or too late and that the market had already finished. On entering the village our driver remembered the location and we branched off down the ‘high street’. My misgivings were slightly reduced by our driver's confidence but almost immediately increased when I looked behind us to see cattle and goats being driven up the road in the opposite direction. We did a quick about turn and followed the animals and their owners.

The market was held in a largish open space about a kilometre from the village. When we arrived it was pretty much in full swing. Groups of animals and their owners milled around the market area. Billy goats started fights with each other – their owners pulling them apart with varying degrees of success. Sheep clustered together in anxious looking groups as bulls and cows loomed over them. There didn’t seem to be any particular area for the different types of animals. Buyers and sellers haggled and argued about prices before striking a deal with an extravagant handshake.

Our students had been given a questionnaire to fill in and a clipboard and moved off in pairs to find out as much as they could about the livestock trade in general and goats in particular. I was soon accosted by a guy who had visited our place in October and had talked to me about the wisdom of buying a milk cow for our work. He was keen to help me understand the ins and outs of buying and selling in the market. He grabbed me enthusiastically by the hand and we set off round the market together. (In Kenya it is perfectly normal for guys to hold hands when they are walking in public – it’s a bit odd but you get used to it fairly quickly).

It was through my new friend that I found out about the shady side of the market. It turned out to be another TIA classic. There is a ban on the official livestock markets in the area because of an outbreak of disease, (I didn’t catch which type but obviously something serious enough for the authorities to be worried). There is a ‘quarantine’ order in place. To get round the inconvenience of the ban the farmers have simply started another market, outside the village, and continued trading, so far without interference. (As, I guess a minor concession, the market does close a bit earlier than the ‘official’ market would – at 11.30ish instead of mid-afternoon). Nobody seemed especially bothered about the new arrangements. Business continued as usual.

This time of year is a bit of a slack period in the livestock trade. There isn’t much money about as many parents have had to pay the first term’s High School fees for their children and cash is in short supply. Prices should pick up in April and peak from September to November as the next harvest comes in and people have more money in their pockets again. Good timing for our goat project.

We had a great morning and our first outing with the students was a real success. We all learned something new. If you visit our part of Kenya and see someone walking away from a village market with an animal wearing a new rope you’ll know that the animal has just got a new owner. If you see somebody driving animals away from the market with old ropes round their necks you’ll know that the market wasn’t a great success and that the animals are returning home unsold. As the market packed up and everybody headed for home there was a noticeable absence of new ropes around necks. Still, there’s always the next time - for this particular market on Sunday when the farmers will, once again, pit their collective wits against the authorities and reconvene their illegal gathering. Drovers of the world unite!