I saw him dash across the street and run off down a dirt road. He was large and brown with impressive horns. He was not the black and white docile cow roaming green pastures in idyllic oil paintings. Rather, he was massive and fierce, a cow on a mission.
Seconds later, I saw a man in flowing robes, his head wrapped in cloth, running after the steer. His arm was raised, brandishing a whip, and he dodged motorcycles and sotramas in an effort to make gains on his escaping prize.
Minutes after that spectacle, I passed an overturned motorcycle, it's rider attempting to collect his pile of fallen goods and return his machine to its upright position. I suspected the cow's mad dash for freedom had played a role here.
Bamako streets are filled with rebel cows. Eid al Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, is upon us. It's something of a cow apocalypse. To prepare for the 2-3 days of feasting after the month long fast, beef is being chopped, piled and packed onto motorcycles. Roadsides are lined with cardboard or plastic sheeting and fresh beef stacked into heaps.
The slaughter of cows takes place anywhere, everywhere and the bodies are laid out, necks sliced open, blood gurgling and spurting onto the ground. Legs twitch and their massive chests still heave with final breaths. Men are cleaning, cutting, and washing interior organs and separating everything into ragged raw piles of cow parts.
It goes on all day and into the night. Early evening I stop by an ATM and witness two men struggling to tie a cow into the back of a motor-cart, the blue Xingda tricycle seen all over the streets of Bamako. On this day, too many of them are filled with tied up cows, kidnapped and carted off to death. It's no wonder they're revolting.
Further down the road, I see two men trying to control a cow who is giving his best effort to break free. They've tied ropes around his legs and neck and are trying to manipulate his movements marionette style. A third man comes up along the side and the cow turns on him, horns slashing through air. The man jumps back- into the roadway- and the two rope holders pull tighter. The cow is subdued and traffic winds around the trio.
Later that evening, I share the escaping cow story with my Dutch neighbor. We are poolside at a quiet hotel on the Niger River. In turn, she tells me about the legendary cows of her village in the Netherlands. Occasionally during the time of slaughter, cows escape there as well. And one cow in particular got a pretty good lead on his farmer. Another farmer, a retired farmer who had a long history with the cow and knew him well, was called in. The retired farmer managed to catch up with the cow and use their special past relationship to calm him down and convince him to return.
Of course, the cow was not slaughtered after that and was awarded special cow status. A kind of mythical, legendary king cow hero who'd managed to escape the certainty of slaughter and go on to live long and comfortably into cow old age. One brave cow who has apparently been inspiring cows world-wide to strive for their freedom, even if it means dashing across crowded city streets and overturning motorcycles.
