One of the things I have enjoyed the most about Ghana is seeing animals on the side of the road. Especially in the rural parts of Ghana, it’s very common to see goats/chickens/dogs/cats/cows/etc. roaming around close to the streets. In the United States, this doesn’t seem to be that common, and especially not in more urban areas.
This morning when I was going to work, I saw a few dogs in the neighborhood. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love dogs – in fact, one of my backup career ideas is to be a dog breeder on a rural farm in the Northwest if the whole advertising thing doesn’t work out. But I see lots of dogs in the United States. What I was really hoping to see were some goats.
Goats, as a species, are so great for so many reasons. They make hilarious noises (look up a video called “goats yelling like humans” if you haven’t seen it), they look so agile and graceful hopping across the gutters and obstacles in their way, but most of all they’re just cute and adorable. I never really thought about this much before, but if I ever have some land in the future when I get back to the United States, I think I will buy some goats so I can have my own goat posse.
Ghanians are very religious. Christianity in particular is quite popular, with over 70% of Ghanians identifying as Christian. The reason I bring this up this seemingly random statistic is because I think there must have been some divine intervention today, and it may have been due to all the Christian energy that exists in Ghana. I don’t know. But I think God decided to bless me, because as I was leaving work, right across the street were two goats grazing on some grass!
My morning prayer had been directly answered. I was elated. I immediately went over to watch them graze (from a safe distance of course – I wanted to make sure to give them the right amount of personal space). I can’t really explain why seeing these goats grazing made me so happy, but I haven’t felt such a pure and euphoric feeling of joy in a very long time. This increased even more when they started walking away – I was sad that they were leaving, but the black one started making this low pitched “baaaaaahhhh” noise like goats do, and I called out in response, imitating it and doing a “baaaaahhhh” of my own.
The goat responded back with the same low pitched “baaaaaahhh.” This went back and forth about five or six times. It made me wonder what was going through the goat’s mind. Did the goat think I was a fellow goat? Were we communicating in some kind of goat language? Either way, it was funny – my coworkers were laughing pretty hard. One of them asked if I’d ever seen a goat before.
My experience in Ghana has had many highlights, but this might be one of my favorites. A seemingly mundane encounter with some goats absolutely made my day.
Comments by jaclynr