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Texto em português mais abaixo.
As I wrote in Cabrinha d'Soncente, the goats have roamed Cape Verde since the first settlers brought them in the 15th century. Some historians say the goats were responsible for desertification of the islands, because these steadfast animals, in free ranging, without natural enemies, would have destroyed the natural vegetation. By the other hand, some scholars defend that the undemanding goats provided the poor Cape-Verdeans with a rare source of animal protein, and also fibers (hair) and hides (skin) for several uses. In any case, the goats success is due to their easy rearing and ability to eat almost anything.
The Cape-Verdeans use to say that goats eat even stones. Of course they don't, but it's a reminder of the difficult conditions that affect both animals and people in these islands. In the Ovídio Martins' poem "Flagelados do Vento-Leste"*, there is the philosophical verse "As cabras ensinaram-nos a comer pedras para não perecermos" ("The goats taught us to eat stones, so that we didn't die").
In this photo, in São Vicente Island, some white, black and brown pixels are goats; the rest are stones. See them better in the zoomed workshop. The goatherd is a couple of brown and red pixels below the houses.
Os cabo-verdianos costumam dizer que as cabras até comem pedras. No poema de Ovídio Martins Flagelados do Vento-Leste ele escreve: As cabras ensinaram-nos a comer pedras para não perecermos. Texto completo na nota de
* - see it in Hard stone, low pay.