A long time ago, I worked in a small town in northern Uganda, in Kitgum District. There, I once met a guy named Kidega. Kidega told us a story about two men who were walking along a village footpath somewhere in rural Kitgum.
Village footpaths are usually paths where people can walk or ride a bicycle or motorcycle, but not drive a vehicle. Because people use these paths so often, the grass wears down, and the path itself is mostly bare ground. On either side, the grass can be quite tall during the rainy season, while in the dry season it is normally dry and a bit bare.
So, Kidega told us about these two men walking along one of these village footpaths.
As they walked, they saw a man some distance ahead of them pulling a goat on a rope.
The two men were friends, and one of them was a teacher. The other man looked at the teacher and said in Acholi:
“Lapwony, dyel eni mwode.”
Loosely translated into English, he was saying:
“Teacher, this goat can be eaten.” What he meant, however, was that he could steal this Goat and they would eat it.”
The teacher looked at him in disbelief and said, “No way! There is no way you can steal that Goat.”
Of course, the teacher had good reason to think so. The man ahead of them was holding the Goat on a rope. How could anyone possibly steal the Goat without him noticing?
Ideally, stealing the Goat meant somehow taking it away from the man without him noticing. Otherwise, he would shout, and people would come to his rescue.
So when the teacher insisted that there was no way his friend could steal the Goat, his friend simply told him: “Okay. Watch me.”
They increased their walking speed until they caught up with the man pulling the Goat. They passed him and continued walking ahead.
After about 100 to 150 metres, the teacher’s friend removed one shoe and dropped it on the path. They kept walking.
After another 100 metres or so, he removed the second shoe and dropped it on the path as well. Then the two men hid in the bush near where they had dropped the second shoe.
Eventually, the man with the Goat reached the first shoe. He saw it lying on the footpath and looked at it, but didn’t seem very interested. He probably thought, “Ah, someone’s shoe fell off here.” But then again, what do you do with one shoe? So he left it there and continued walking with his Goat.
About 100 metres farther along the footpath, he came across the second shoe. Then he remembered. “Ah! This must be the other shoe!” He now realised that if he went back and picked up the first one, he would have a complete pair. But it was difficult to walk all the way back while pulling the Goat.
And he didn’t know anyone was hiding nearby. Typically, in the village, you wouldn’t expect someone to take your Goat simply because you had tied it somewhere for a few minutes.
So the man tied the Goat securely to a bundle of spear grass. It was secure enough that the Goat couldn’t simply free itself. He then walked back to collect the first shoe.
Meanwhile, as soon as he disappeared down the path, the two friends emerged from the bush. They quickly untied the Goat and left with it. By the time the owner of the Goat collected the first shoe and returned, his Goat was no more. He ran around screaming that someone had taken his Goat.
But the teacher and his friend had long gone. And they had taken the Goat with them.
This story Kidega told us many years ago has never escaped my mind. Not because I admired the teacher and his friend’s mischief, but because of the lesson it teaches us: some people see possibilities where others see impossibility.
I learned from this story that when someone says, “It is impossible,” what they sometimes actually mean is, “I cannot see how this can be done,” or, “I cannot see another way around this.”
We tend to mix things up. We confuse something very difficult to do with something impossible. We confuse something unlikely to happen with something that cannot happen. We confuse something risky with something impossible. And sometimes, simply because no one has done something before, we conclude it cannot be done, but these things are not the same.
Something can be difficult. It can be unlikely. It can be risky. It can even be something that no one around us has ever done before. But none of those things necessarily means it is impossible.
Over the years, whenever Kidega and I met, we often reflected on what other people saw as impossible. Whenever we talked about a situation where people thought something couldn’t be done, we would look at each other and say: “This Goat can be eaten.” It became our way of looking at situations that others had already dismissed as impossible.
Throughout my personal and professional life, I have had many moments to decide whether “This Goat can be eaten”.
I recall a time when I wanted to study for my master’s abroad. Back then, I was very passionate about peace and justice studies, community development and humanitarian work. I was so passionate about these areas that I wanted to study at the best schools abroad to broaden my theoretical and practical knowledge.
But studying abroad was extremely expensive. Coming from such a poor background, I couldn’t afford the tuition myself. The whole idea seemed unrealistic. Some of my friends thought studying abroad was a far-fetched dream. One friend told me I was wasting money on application fees and advised me to focus on my job instead.
Some university applications cost $80, $95 or even $100. At the time, that was almost a full month’s salary. The odds were really against me. Financially, I could barely afford to do it. But I was considering it.
I knew that getting a scholarship was very, very difficult. But I also knew that I needed to try. So I kept shooting my shot. I kept submitting applications. I wasn’t certain that I would get a scholarship, but there was one big difference between me and some of my friends: they thought it was impossible, so they didn’t take the shot. I thought it was difficult, but still worth a shot.
Eventually, I got the scholarship and went for my master’s at my dream school abroad.
It wasn’t simply a case of, “I believed, therefore I succeeded.” I couldn’t guarantee the outcome of any of my scholarship applications, but I kept trying. I kept persisting, and I refused to declare that getting a scholarship at that prestigious school was impossible before I had tried.
My second “This Goat can be eaten” moment came when I started my first international job.
In Uganda, people take job security very seriously. I took it seriously too. Generally, people in Uganda prefer a longer-term, secure job even if it pays less than a three-month contract abroad.
I received an offer for a three-month job abroad, but the pay was not significantly higher than what I earned in Kampala. From the conventional perspective, resigning from my long-term job in Uganda to take a three-month contract abroad sounded quite irrational.
One of my friends even asked me, “How can you leave a permanent contract with your current employer to take a three-month job abroad?” That question explained how others saw the situation. But I saw it differently.
I wasn’t comparing my long-term job at home with a three-month contract abroad. I was focused on the possibilities those three months might lead me to.
I was thinking: if I take this three-month contract, I will gain international experience. I will develop a network of international colleagues. I will learn more about a different context and conflict. I will gain new experiences. I saw all of this as something that would add value beyond the three months written in the contract. So I took the three months.
I worked for the three months, and when they ended, my contract was extended. Before I knew it, what had started as a three-month contract had turned into a year in my first international job, and it paid off in the end.
This isn’t to say anyone should make reckless decisions or take reckless risks. But remember that some opportunities are valuable not because of their duration or pay, but because of the doors they can open for us.
Whenever someone tells us something is impossible in life, there are about three main reasons why.
The first is that, quite often, people are measuring your possibilities using their own experiences. They don’t know your experience. They don’t know what you’ve gone through. But somehow, they look at your situation through the lens of their own experience, mirror that against you, and tell you, “Ah, no. This is impossible.”
The second reason, in my view, is that they are looking primarily at the risk, while you may be looking at the opportunity.
Some people are very risk-averse. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be aware of risk. Of course they should. But some people don’t want to take any risk. If something is risky, they would rather not do it. So sometimes, when people tell us something is impossible, it is because they focus more on the risk than on the opportunities that might be out there. It is important to remember that, in real life, the opportunity that comes along the way can be much bigger than the risks ahead.
The third reason is that sometimes people mistake the absence of a visible path for the absence of a path altogether. They don’t see how something can be possible. But not seeing the path doesn’t mean there is no path.
But it is also important to acknowledge that sometimes the sceptics are right. Not everything is possible. Some ideas are genuinely bad. Some risks are not worth taking.
But “This Goat can be eaten” isn’t about ignoring everyone else and doing whatever you want. It is about not allowing someone else’s inability to see the prospect of something to become proof to you that something is impossible, that an opportunity doesn’t exist, or that a certain path is completely closed.
“This Goat can be eaten”, in my view, means using your own judgement to decide what might be possible. It means looking for the path you can see, even when everyone else can’t.
I should probably put a disclaimer in this story.
I am not saying that you should go around villages looking for somebody’s Goat, dropping your shoes along the way so that you can steal it. These arguments are about what “This Goat can be eaten” means to me.
Whenever I hear someone say something is impossible, I try to sit back, reflect, and look at other possibilities.
What could be possible?
What other path can I explore?
What else is visible that other people are not seeing?
What is being said without actually being said in words?
I am always looking for those possibilities. And that is what “This Goat can be eaten” has meant to me over all these years.
The next time someone tells you that what you are trying to do is impossible, or that what you are planning to do cannot be done, listen to them. Ask yourself the difficult questions. Rethink your idea and consider the challenges around it. And if you can still see a clear path they can’t see, perhaps you don’t need to argue with them.
Perhaps you just need to smile and say:
This
Goat can be eaten.
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