Shepherds are the main supporting act of the Christmas nativity scene. Kristina Chetcuti meets one of the very few remaining shepherds in Malta as he watches over his flock in Siġġiewi.
“I’ve been up since 3 a.m.,” Ċensu Schembri, 63, says matter-of-factly. Isn’t he tired? “Yes,” he says. “But that means that I’m able to round up early – by 6 or 7 p.m. I’ll be home.”
Such slacking off means that Mr Schembri, a shepherd, will only work 16 hours today – and every other day, actually. But he doesn’t complain. “Now look,” he says gruffly, “it’s not a job, it’s a way of life. And it’s got to be treated as a way of life, because you couldn’t do it otherwise.”
Mr Schembri, on his daily walkabout with his flock, certainly looks the part: worn-out wellies, old tattered jeans and weather-beaten face. All that’s missing is the shepherd’s crook. Although every now and then he makes a makeshift one with the odd loose branch and uses it to steer the sheep and goats in the right direction: “Hoy! Hoy! Har!” he barks. And the flock, sheepishly – there’s no other word for it – come back to their master.
“This is my life. They are my passion,” he says nodding to the herd. He is a man of few words but his tone of voice is not apologetic. He truly has a bleating heart for his goats and sheep – numbering around 120. He used to have more than 300 but now is trying to scale down as the responsibility comes with a lot of hard work: He must milk them, wean them, vaccinate them, treat them for pests, walk them to graze for about two or three hours each day, choose those for culling, and generally keep them “looking nice”.
He takes pride in the way they look: “I like my goats and sheep to look well.” Which is why, with the exception of Sundays, he takes them out every day, usually down the scenic route of Ħagar Qim and Mnajdra, because grazing makes a flock healthier. Apart from that, he trims their horns, adorns them with bells and collars and shampoos them regularly. “A dirty flock looks terrible, as if you don’t care,” he says. And certainly the black and white fluffy creatures around us all look magnificently primped, more like the occupants of a beauty parlour than field trekkers.
He knows them all by heart. They are never tied up even when in the barn. And in the morning they come out of their own accord to be milked. Does he call them by name? “No, they don’t have names but I know each and every one. Even if I had to give away a month-old kid and I would see it five years later I’d recognise it instantly.
“See her over there, breathing very heavily?” he asks, suddenly concerned by a distant bleat. “Well she’s on the point, any moment now.” The pregnant doe in question has moved ahead of the flock and is looking at him, as if beckoning her master to urge the others to make a move. “She wants to go home – to prepare for the birth.”
Sometimes, if the kids or lambs are breech he helps in the delivery; mostly though, the animals manage by themselves: “They are fit because they move about daily, so labour is not long.”
When Mr Schembri himself was born, he inherited an instinct for animals in his DNA: herding was in the genes of his Tarxien family. By the age of 12 his dreams were of sheep and goats. “I was the oldest of 14 siblings and by the time I was 18 years old my father had passed on everything to me.”
He moved from Tarxien to his farm in the limits of Siġġiewi about 20 years ago and has been there ever since, rearing goats and sheep for milk and meat. “Before we even used to sell the wool we’d shear off the sheep in summer but now no one buys it anymore, we just throw it away,” he says, a little sadly.
When the time for slaughter comes, he doesn’t get too attached. “You do the best you possibly can by them while you’ve got them. They live a free and healthy life here,” he says. “So therefore, when that time comes, they’re on the lorry and away.” And he eats lamb himself? “Oh yes.” He nods enthusiastically. “I love it.
Mr Schembri says shepherding is a dying trade. There are only some five shepherds left in Malta. Out of his four sons only one has gone into the animal business. The other three are employed in nine-to-five jobs. “I think they did the best thing. Now, my other son – he’s 28 – and he has to work everyday till 8 p.m. But it’s his calling. For him it’s not a job, it’s his life.” Deep down one senses a father’s pride.
His son has set up a cow farm. “Cows are better business. I’m not a cowman at all. Goats and sheep are what I love. I will never retire.” He pauses and after a while, grins: “That’s my quarrel with the wife: she tells me that I love my goats more than her.” Recently he went abroad for a week: “And what do you know? I really missed them.”
It’s not hard to understand his dedication when you’re out there in the fields with the grazing flock: There’s a peaceful silence in the surrounding greenery, which is only interrupted by the gentle tinkling of the goat bells, the occasional kid bleat, and the munching of grass. Shepherds are perhaps the people most in touch with nature — which explains why the angels, as the nativity story goes, opted to first announce the birth of Jesus to them.
More than two thousand years later, the Maltese shepherd pretty much sums it up: “Fl-hena tad-dinja nkun jien (I’m in the most blissful place) when I’m out with my flock.”