VEXED IN THE CITY: Where are all the rams?

All around the country the ram community has been in a state of anxiety, wondering which of them will be allowed to live another year and which will end up deep fried and garnished with onions and tomatoes.

Most of them needn’t worry, as the state of the economy almost guarantees that a large number of rams will be around to welcome the year 2010.

Over the past few days I’ve seen several trucks and vans whizz past on Lagos roads with their cargo of reluctant rams - the unlucky ones who have been bought by those who can afford them. One Police van that was parked by Police College had a huge one in the back that was struggling and straining against the rope that held it. Failing to free itself, it resorted to peering through the glass divider and tapping its horns against it.

“E be like say e dey beg the policemen to free am” Benjamin observed.

With the state of the Average Man’s finances many people are unlikely to find rams on their plates this year, garnished or not.

“At this rate I’m going to have to ‘slaughter’ fish,” a friend of mine lamented.

“If I want to eat ram, I’ll have to go to someone else’s house and hope that he had enough cash to buy one or two.”

Whether this drop in celebratory spend is a result of the global recession (which these days is to blame for everything from bankruptcy to failed marriages) or because people have learned to live strictly within their means; the rams, particularly those sold in low income areas, can relax a bit and let their brothers in high income areas do all the worrying.

When I think back to Sallah in the early Eighties I remember what seemed to be a ram bonanza, with neighbours exchanging so many bowls of meat that we ate it till we were sick of it. We had ram in stew, ram in soups, ram sandwiches and, as we approached the end of our supply, bits of ram in omelettes. It usually took nearly a year to recover from that ram overdose.

Even up to a few years ago, say 2004, there was far more activity than I have recorded in my neighbourhood this year. For the past week I have been surveying my neighbours’ back yards from our kitchen’s very vantage position, reporting disappointedly on their ram status.

“Nothing much happening on this street,” I updated my mum. “Not a ram in sight. Not even a chicken.”

This is probably an indicator of what to expect at Christmas. In the next few weeks chickens, goats and turkeys will be in a similar state of agitation as Christmas draws near but like their ram friends, they probably have no cause to worry.