Is $50 a fair price for a bride? How about a goat?

From the BBC, this news report:

Sudan man forced to ‘marry’ goat

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his “wife”, after he was caught having sex with the animal.

The goat’s owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

“We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together,” Mr Alifi said.

Mr Alifi, Hai Malakal in Upper Nile State, told the Juba Post newspaper that he heard a loud noise around midnight on 13 February and immediately rushed outside to find Mr Tombe with his goat.

“When I asked him: ‘What are you doing there?’, he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up”.

Mr Alifi then called elders to decide how to deal with the case.

“They said I should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife,” Mr Alifi told the newspaper.

It is good to see creative ideas flourishing around the world.

After the offender had been tied up by the goat’s owner, he probably felt like $50 for the goat was getting off pretty cheap.

How much does a goat usually go for in Sudan? Surely less than $50. A good goat sells
for as much as $100 in the U.S., but this probably was not a very good goat.

(Thanks to my old student Ryan Parks for this link.)