"If I had $100,000, I'd spend it all on sheep," says Abib Seck, a sheep-dealer. Such enthusiasm is not unusual in Senegal. People there adore sheep. Not only are they delicious, they can also be status symbols. Every year during Ta-baski, a religious festival, hundreds of thousands of them are sacrificed (and then gobbled up). Poorer families often take out crippling loans to buy one so they don't lose social standing. The latest craze is for a particularly fancy breed. Ladoum sheep are huge and majestic—rams can weigh as much as three grown men. Startlingly, they are also without wool (which is not a problem in west Africa as it is too hot to wear jumpers). Some Ladoum look more like small horses than sheep.
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