- Learn how to plant tobacco
- Help slaughter a pig
Ok, so they weren't really things that made my 43 things list but they were interesting none the less. We got up early this morning because our friend told us that some of the road workers were wanting to buy some pork and that we were going to kill the pig. So, not knowing the next time we'd have a chance to slaughter a pig, we volunteered to help. We went and pulled the pig out of his pen (which is funny because the pig was the only barnyard animal here that was actually in a pen). Really we didn't do much other than watch the 5 guys go and pull him out. It was a pretty big pig, around 250 lbs., so it took about 5 guys to get it out. Once it got pulled out it realized what was going on and it started going crazy. The guys got a rope around its head and put it up on this table (once again in the middle of the courtyard) and our friend we are staying with stuck a knife in its throat. Eventually he hit the jugular and blood started coming out as if someone turned on a water hose. It was pretty stinkin' gross; however it was more gross that they were putting the blood in a big bowl so that they could use it for food later. Then we threw the pig in a big barrel of hot water to help make the hair come off. The guys started getting meat cleavers and shaving the skin off of the pig. The next thing I know one of the guys hands M_ and myself one and we are shaving the skin off of this dead pig. We did this for a few minutes and then breakfast was ready so we went and ate. I was telling M_ about how it was weird that all the road workers were just sitting there eating breakfast as they were killing that pig as if nothing was going on. M_ noticed that they were cutting off the head, so we grabbed our breakfast and went back outside to watch. Irony is funny like that I guess. Eventually they gutted the entire thing and saved every piece of it. M_ spent a little time squeezing poop out of the intestines and helping to turn them inside out so that one of the locals could make blood sausage out of it. I wasn't a huge fan of that (since there really wasn't any place to wash up) and I'm not a fan of contracting some disease from pig intestine. We were planning on going out to plant tobacco but we spent the rest of the morning sitting around as our host walked around town finding people to buy the rest of the pig pieces. During the morning he sold the whole thing, which was good for him, not so good for us. We still had a few pieces of the pig that were left that no one really wanted to buy. This became our lunch/dinner. So for lunch we had a lovely meal of spiced pig liver and some part of the stomach that was mixed in with a lot of fat. Dinner was even better when we got to eat pig head and the other part of the stomach, which was surprisingly different than the part we ate for lunch. By the time we got out to the field I was feeling great since I was filled with nutritious food. We spent a few hours planting tobacco, which consisted of M_ leveling out rows with a rake, myself going behind him and digging holes with a hoe, and then our host sticking in the plant and covering it with dirt. It was a lot of work but we got to spend some time talking to him. We actually got into a good 30 minute talk with him and his wife and got to do quite a bit of sharing. They were asking some good questions and were very interested. He has heard before but he still had some questions and things he wanted to think about. Later that night around the fire in the kitchen we had a chance to share with a couple of other people that were in his family. You can ask all sorts of questions as an interested tourist and they always respond with questions back.
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