Goats!

While I was away at IST, our goats gave birth to baby goats. To be more exact, three of our goats were pregnant, and we now have seven of the most precious, adorable baby goats in the world.

The goat who was a baby when I first arrived is now an adolescent, and like an adolescent, is scruffy, awkward, has balls to big for his body, and likes to cause trouble. The two toddler girls in our family were getting ready to have their morning tea, but the younger one managed somehow to disappear for a moment right before it was served and reappeared with grey dust all over her hands and face, looking extremely bewildered. Her tea and bread were placed on the mat next o her sister's, but while her sister dug in she was taken off the be cleaned. Well, of course, the adolescent goat thought this was too good to resist and came up with every intention of enjoying the tea in the girl's lieu. The usual "Sa!" and "Tch!"'s didn't seem to have much effect, so eventually my sister had to go get my kokwana's walking stick from against the wall and chase the poor goat all the way back to the kraal before he gave up on turning back towards the tea.

Later that day, we let the goats out of the yard for their afternoon of wandering around the village to forage for food. They're supposed to do this on the roads and in the vacant fields. However, one of our neighbors had left their gate ajar. The goats sussed this out with surprisingly little delay, and made a mad dash around the corner for their yard, which grows temptingly green grass (remember, it's winter here—most of the grass is pretty yellow right now). All of our dozen or so goats were standing in that yard milling around. We had to send somebody to go chase them out before they completely tore up the grass.