Naturally Free Ventures: Buzkashi Match aka Goat Pulling

This is definitely the most interesting sport I have ever seen. It is played with a dead headless goat that has been stuffed with sand to make it heavy. I attended a match with the program yesterday. This is definitely a man sport here no surprise here...every sport is a man sport in this country meaning no woman was spotted in the either place unless she was cooking. This is definitely a dangerous sport...I saw an old man who couldn't get up and run fast enough get trampled by horses...i saw many players and their horses fall or people get thrown off of them. This was a giant free for all.. the point of the game to get the goat and run it past a white flag. each time a player scored he was given a prize the end prizes included brand new cars. We only stayed for a small portion of the game. The entire time we were there we were stared at probably because we were foreign and mostly because we were women. The guys only got stared at when they took pictures. The locals didn't understand why we wanted to take pictures or why we take them in the first place. It was nice being outside of the city where no one knows english so we don't have people yelling random english words at us. When the people around us realized we understood them and could talk back they were nice enough to explain what was going on and made sure we could see the match, the announcer was very hard to hear. Here is a link from wiki to learn more about Buzkashi. It was hard for me to get good pictures but some of the other students got really good pictures with their nice cameras so when they upload them I'll share. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzkashi

Enjoy the pictures....

The open field before the match

The new cars and the dead goat are over there somewhere

Every single one of these men were staring at us until I pulled out my camera

The people below us are squatting on a steep hill...we are in the back standing

and it begins this isn't even all of the playes

we were relatively high so the horse never came in our direction but we did have a few scares where we ran off

This is a small hill....it was covers with men sitting on it until the horse started charging in that direction one old man couldn't get up and run fast enough after this picture I saw him get trampled. Its bad they have no where to run it was crowded and behind them is a wall its a really bad place to sit but you get close to the game.