Do goats shed their hooves?

My friends are SO supportive. As one said in a chat with me the other day in response to a conversation about the implications of the potential ICC indictment: "get your crazy international-development ass out of the heart of darkness!" Can't you just feel the love? However, what is ironic about the statement is that this particular friend happens to be not in a place that is rebuilding from war, but a place that is actually STILL AT war, and instead of being able to run towards the airport at the first sign of trouble like the good little NGO employee that I am, he is one of the people that would be sent INTO the situation at the first sign of trouble. But I'm not going to say exactly where he is...(kough, kough, KABUL) Sorry starcaviar, I had to call you out on that one :)

This morning I walked outside my tent and lo and behold, what do I see but a goat hoof. Not attached to a leg or anything, but it was just the hoof lying there by itself. Were goats having a midnight frolic on my porch and one of their hooves fall/tear off? Or did the dogs find the hoof somewhere in some field and leave it on my doorstep as a present? Either way i didn't even know that goats could lose their hoofs. So strange. I completely forgot to take a picture of it, otherwise I could display it here for all to see. Instead, I have some other pictures taken over the past couple weeks:

1. All those gray mounds are gravel. People, usually women, children and the disabled, sit by the side of the road all day, every day, using medium-sized rocks to break other medium-sized rocks into smaller pieces of rock to be sold as gravel. All day. Every day. Forever. "What do you do for a living?" "I break rocks."


















2. The outside of my tent!


















3. View of the Gudele neighborhood and Jebel Kujur (Witch Mountain) from my back porch


















4. The sink in the office - notice all the dirt? That's just from the water that comes out of the tap. It's so dirty because it comes straight from the Nile. Sometimes it's unclear if by washing your hands you are making them cleaner or dirtier.


















5. A common sight in Juba - goats eating garbage on the side of the road. There is no waste disposal of any kind in Juba. Except for the goats. And chickens. And sometimes donkeys.


















6. The Juba fire station. Not that there's any way to call the Fire Brigade if there's actually a fire, but that's not the point. The point is that they have shiny new trucks.


















7. A rain storm coming into Juba - taken from my tent.