About every six months or so Charlie shot one of his pigs; for food of course, not for fun. No-one knew how the pigs came to be in that remote, hidden away mission station in East Africa, and Charlie himself had probably forgotten how he had acquired them. There were no pigs in that part of the country, not even wild boor or river hog; these were big European type pigs. Over the years they had become a bit of a feature of the landscape. Charlie built a sty for them near his house, but they preferred to run free so why not, although they were always penned up at night as a precaution against hungry leopards.
I first encountered Charlie's pigs when I was 6 years old and had moved to that strange place from Ireland, an equally strange place. A little boy's paradise it was. A few days after getting there, and just as our family thought they had seen all the surprises we could handle, we heard grunting and banging at the front door. One of us opened the door and a bulky, pinky brown sow pushed past and made her way, still grunting, into the house. She trotted through the living room and out the back door as if she knew where she was headed, and none of us was able to do anything about it. She was huge. Behind her trotted 13, yes 13, squealing piglets, one after the other. That was it. They pushed in, trotted out and were gone.
However every so often Charlie shot a pig. It made a change from tough, mangy old cow which was the normal diet, and from chicken or duck which tasted fine, but by the time it came to eating them we had made friends with them, given them names, and had them lay eggs in our beds, wardrobes and even in our shoes. So pig it was to be.
On the morning of the shoot all the children, about ten of us, learned what was to happen. We were excited. We talked it up and recounted all the other pig shoots we had witnessed. It was only when Charlie turned up with his gun that we started to remember that part of the deal was that one of the pigs that we played with and gave a name to was to end up dead, sliced to pieces and cooked. So there was a certain ambivalence tearing our young hearts: the excitement of the shot versus feelings for the pig. Since we knew we had no say in the matter and that the pig was definitely for the chop we quite easily resigned ourselves to the pig's fate and opted for the excitement.
First the pigs were all chased from the sty and driven well away from the scene, all except the chosen victim that is, who spent the morning feeding and rolling in the muck inside the safety of the sty and oblivious to what was planned. Water was put on to boil, lashings of it. I thought that was to give the women something to do and kept them out of the way!
The children were never allowed to watch the actual kill. We were herded to the front of the house with the other pigs and told not to come near the sty till we heard the shot. Eventually it came. We were nervous, not wanting it to come yet anxious to hear it. And when it rang out it was never as clear and loud as we anticipated, more of a dull thud.
That's when the blood and guts really got started.
First the pig was shaved - that's what the hot water was for. I'm still not quite sure why such care was taken over the pig's toilette; they could at least have offered him a last shave before he died I always thought. Then Charlie went into butcher mode, and he seemed to know what he was doing. The internal organs were all laid out intact, the limbs were removed and the head. The belly was carved up and the tail set aside. The feet were another prized item and reminded me of meals of pig's trotters at my grandmother's house. The lugs were useful too, and the blood was put into a basin. At the end of the carnage the heads of our various families who had all been involved went off home with the spoils.
We loved those days, going home covered in blood with stories to tell and boasts to make.
My biggest boast from those pig-shooting days is that when my mother put what she euphemistically referred top as a pork roast on the table a bullet fell out onto my plate.
Cyn