When cattle keeping becomes a curse than a blessing

When cattle keeping becomes a curse than a blessing

By: Abraham Daljang Maker

It has never occurred to me that what would be the pride of certain community would turn out to be the curse at some point. May be because I am looking at this at the wrong angle, but without doubt, I am pretty sure that it is getting into my nerves every day.

What I am insinuating is that, cattle keeping in some communities has turned out to be a total disaster to themselves.  Cows have all the benefits you can think of and these benefits include but not limited to meat, skin, hooves, dung, milk, horns; mention them…To some communities, it is the source of dowry, some countries have become considerably rich due to cattle keeping. However, to some communities in south Sudan, notably Lakes State, it has turn out to be sources of misery. About 95% of the clan conflicts in Lakes State are circling around cattle keeping, believe it or not, but the truth is, cattle have created more harm beyond the doubt. There was this dictum, phrase or whatever you may called it. “raath bagaar sakit” this is Arabic word directed to those who keep cattle  by associating their thinking and behaviour to their cows. This was coined up by some non-cattle keeping communities to put down the cattle keeping communities who use brutal and aggressive ways of problem solving. In fact this was a sarcastic way to downtrodden cattle keeping people or maybe to correct them because of their harsh attitude towards problem solving.

Nevertheless, I strongly disagree with this phrase “raath beta bagaar sakit” because even cows are more peaceful and friendly than those who keep them. Just take a look at the way they share grass in field, they hardly fight except when there are two bulls rivalling over a cow; but this is an obvious issues even human sometimes rub shoulders over a lady.  Therefore, it is an exaggerated statement to associate aggressiveness of cattle keepers to their cattle, because cows are more peaceful than their owners.

Back to the point of cows making more harms to their owners than good. Like I said; the highest percentage of conflicts in Lakes state is centred on cows. Take an example of cattle raiding, many people go raiding their neighbours which to some extent lead to killing some innocent people who might intentionally be target of might be the victims of circumstances. The idea behind raiding is to make sure that one has more cows for marriage and other factors like social recognition based on number of cows one has. Another point to note is that, most killings are due to girls’ elopement or outside marriage pregnancies; because of the value attached to cows and the girls being used as source of family income, fighting is inevitable if a lady seeks a lover who does not have enough cows to give to her parents and the relatives. The reason is simple, a girl fetches more cows as dowry and this will be divided among the members of clans with girl’s family taking the lion share. 100-300 cows are commonly used for marriage, thus leaving the girl with no choice of choosing her lover than to just follow the “do as I said”  A girl has no choice but just wait for the fate to take her to any man her parents want her to marry depending on number of cows a man will give. She will have no voice neither to her in-laws nor her parents but just remain as a slave. This makes the word LOVE meaningless, people marry not because they Love but because they are cows driven as such, Series of retaliations are on daily basis, this is because the relative of the one killed during the fighting over girl’s issues will seek justice through “an eye for an eye” and this has become a vicious cycle over and over again. And this is why we hear every day that unknown gunmen kill so and so, all these are revenge killings and the victims are dying innocently.

Another one stupid thing about cows is that, the owners don’t know how to use them. In fact if cows could talk, they would boast to their owners saying; “you are not better than us, the difference is that we have four legs and horns but you have two legs, we live in peace you fight. We don’t fight over you but you fight over us.” One funny thing is that, someone can own more cows which he sometimes cannot know their number but he remains so poor than someone who has nothing. Some people eat meat when a cow dies of natural cause. Others can die of sickness when he has a lot of cattle but he cannot seek treatment but when he dies, the cow will at last be slaughtered during the funeral. Funny and stupid huh? This, I would term as poverty amidst plenty, even the so called “raath beta bagaar sakit” cannot describe such attitude because a cow cannot die of hunger when seeing a grass or refused to swing its tails when flies sits on its back.

All these things have proved that to some extent, cows have become sources of misery than joy. Economically these are the best domestic animals which can provide wealth, and happiness if well used, I believe that people who keep cattle in most European countries are richer than non-cattle keeping ones, but the contrary is seen here. I have never been to Europe but I have never heard any cattle raiding, if it happened, then it could 16 BC, but I am yet to find out if there were things of that kind.

Unless we sit down and learn that it is us who own the cows not cows owning us, we shall continue to fight ourselves to death. And this will fulfilled the Igbo proverb which says “Brothers who fight themselves to death will leave their father’s wealth to foreigners”

Think twice fellow Lakers and move ahead with development together with girl-child education and stop using them as properties. Let’s learn that independent and self-reliance are the best ways of development, killing takes us nowhere.

Adieu!