Riskou or "The Sharing of Cow"

Somewhere in the heart of Africa live the Peuhls and the Haoussas, two communities that have supported themselves in two different ways for generations: the Peuhls are cattle farmers and the Haoussas work as butchers. They meet at the slaughterhouse downtown, where the herdsmen bring their cows to sell and the butchers do their job. Every part of the cows is used: the meat goes to the consumers, the hides go to the tanners who process them to make leather, the fat is turned into soap, the bones are crushed and incorporated into chicken feed, and even the dung is collected and used in farming. In Riskou or "The Sharing of Cow", the different people who are all links in this chain explain the whole process. The interviews can be heard in the voice-over, while images of the gory slaughter and the processing into all those different products illustrate the story. This traditional way of life is at risk of coming to an end, though, because the government has decided to modernise the slaughterhouse and move it to a place far from the city. This measure will leave many people jobless.