On Sunday mornings there would always be a pile of white cow bones on the grassy verge outside the office. Where did they come from? Did someone march a cow up here and slaughter it on the rough wasteland between my hotel and the new office? I suspected that someone was just dumping the bones there. I thought they probably came along with a truck or a wheelbarrow and dumped the bones, they were too white to be fresh, I thought.
The pile of bones was usually topped off by a pair of yellowing horns, hollow in the core and with a thick fiberous rim, like an old fraying toenail ripped from a ingrown toe.
But it turns out I was wrong... they do indeed lead a cow up here and slice it up on the wasteground.
They buy the placid white cow from the Fulani herders who roam around the expressway, choosing as strong a cow as the Fulani will sell. They bring it up to Utako, tie its legs and pull it over, slicing the jugular as the cow goes down. They butcher the cow right there, stripping off the skin and cutting it up into sections which they sell to the hotel right away from a bloodsoaked table.
The butchers clothes are soaked with tacky, drying blood, and their knives, sharpened down to razor thin whip-blades, cut through fat and flesh. The skin, stripped off, lies drying in the sun. They will sell that too. A whole cow costs about N100,000. Ken tells me the Fulani, who sell milk and yoghurt to make a living will only sell a cow that is too weak to produce more milk. The tail and the head lie burning on a fire. Flies like glistening green glass beads stud the flesh on the table. In a few hours all that will be left are those white bones, a jaw with its teeth still crammed in lying on the table.