Gerald and the Pig

December 04, 2010

A couple of years ago, when we bought our first pigs together, I mentioned to Emelie that it would be nice to have a pig for a pet. She said nothing. Hmmmm…. A while later, I mentioned it again. After a few moments of silence, she said, “In the Philippines, pigs are not pets. Pigs are food.” But I named our three pigs, anyhow: Jocelyn, Maria and Julio. She was right. They became food.

Emelie raised pigs from the time she was young. Sometimes she cried when they were sold, knowing their fate. Her soft spot for “food” is not limited to pigs. Recently I found out that she was still feeding chickens that should have gone the way of the pot a long time ago. They were no longer being raised for financial gain or to save money on food. They were pets.

For the past two days, we’ve been working at her house in the mountains getting the pig pen ready for a new occupant: we cleaned out poop, mud, weeds and worms, repaired the termite-ravaged bamboo fence and put a new roof up for shade. The pig has to be cool.

I named her Cecelia. We bought her from Emelie’s cousin, Roy. She’s just a young ‘un. We’ll fatten her up for a few weeks and she will transform from a living, breathing animal to a cooked pig for the fiesta celebration of Cambalbag, the Citio of Emelie’s home.

Roy lives high up in the mountains where it is cooler and drier; where houses are not within shouting distance and electricity is still a dream for the future. The trees thin out at that altitude and give way to fields of grass, as you climb out of tropical jungle, into a more alpine environment. The road is mud or dirt, depending on precipitation or lack thereof. In either case, the ruts are permanent, just shiftier in the mud. Roy took us to his house on his motorcycle yesterday to view the pig and discuss price.

He and his wife Edna love their high-mountain home. They met in Manila, a teeming city of millions, and moved to Roy’s home area here in the mountains of Ginatilan. So different, it’s hard to imagine the two areas are on the same planet. Emelie told them my dream of building a native house of bamboo and wood with a thatch roof. Typical of Philippine hospitality and generosity, he offered us some of his land on which to build a house, and the bamboo to build it. It still amazes me, the open-hearted generosity of people here.

Today was a great day. After finishing the pen, I went home, ate a can of sardines over rice, with vinegar; took a 2 ½ hour nap, then  went back to Emelie’s house for the evening pig duties: bathing, cleaning the pen, and feeding. And I played with Gerald, our 2 year-old nephew. From his grandmother’s second-story porch, we surveyed the world around us, with Gerald pointing to everything and commenting in his little-boy vernacular. He was fascinated by our new pig. He could see part of the pen and the pig from his vantage point as he stood on the porch’s bench. He called the pig “boboy” which is his uncle’s name. The word for pig in Cebuano is baboy – very close in sound.

I carried Gerald down the steps and over to the pig pen. As I got closer, his little hands, holding my shirt, gripped tighter and included some of the skin on my chest. He squirmed and looked away from the pen. His fascination from the safety of the porch turned to gripping fear when we approached the pen.

From there we went on a tour of Titi Ali’s yard, visiting the kid goats, the chickens and the bull. It was the native rooster that excited him most. I had to agree. The bright oranges and reds, and the rich brown, contrasted by the deep greens and purples of its tail feathers, made it quite a spectacle as it danced in front of us, flipping its floppy red comb from side to side as it moved its head

When we returned to the porch, we played hard for about an hour. Our play mostly consisted of me tossing him around like a segmented bean bag, his head going one way, his legs another and the rest of him compromising by twisting in two directions at once. He loved it. He was all giggles. Whenever I stopped for a rest, he urged me on.

Emelie finished her bucket bath at the communal spigot in the common place between the houses. Then she joined us on the porch. The sun was saying its farewells. It was time for us to do the same. When I handed Gerald over to his lola (grandmother), she told him to say goodbye to uncle Mark. He cried and kicked and flailed is little arms, yelling “Uncoy! Uncoy!” He had put the two words “uncle” and “baboy” together, an unconscious combining of what he loved and what he feared.