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A Pig on the Table — Learning from life in Alentejo |
Learning Life
Skills |
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A Pig on the Table — Learning from life in Alentejo |
Learning Life
Skills |
 6 Little Piglets
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Today we joined our neighbours and did exactly that, not because we especially like toasted pork but because, for me, I want to know some more about the life and how it works for the people who dont need supermarkets, because they know more about living and surviving than I do. If you´re squeamish you wont be curious about the attached photos, in fact even the idea of meat, live one minute dead the next, cooked fresh over a skillet, will make most avoid reading any further. No thank you! But then you´d miss, at least my attempts, to share the good feeling of local folks, men and women, young and old gathering together on a rare occassion like this to do something they´ve done for generations, and well what it means for me. It kind of started with Joaquim, the old well digger. Turns out he has had a hand in digging most of the wells around here. “What do you do” I said, “When there´s a big rock in the way, or the dirt falls in on you?” “Watch out!” I think he said. He asks me about wells in England. Do we still have them? I tell him we´ve lost all our wells. All our water is from the company, a form of dependency. Here there is less control, the way of life is more free. Could be another story. Seems he has had open heart surgery 6 months ago but this isnt stopping him today. He´s in there with the rest, 4 or 5 men and quite a task it is too. It´s Antonio´s pig and his daughter from France is turning up later, so this is a special day. The pig is going to feed a lot of people. But where is Antonio? “Gone to Beja?” I ask Maria his wife. “I think he´s gone to Lisboa”, she replies. So the rest of us go get the pig by ourselves. Alentejo people are not sentimental about animals. You live close to them. You feed them. They feed you. No need for cruelty but no need to get soft about it either. I maintain that if we can´t cope with preparing and gutting our meat what really gives us the right to eat it? Vegetables are easier that way so then we can be vegetarian. Still less though know how to grow it. The question of food is bigger than religion, you can live without the one but not without the other. Unlike us soft north European lot the Alentejo people are as hard as diamonds but also as soft-hearted as they come. Like any native people they know how to live in times without money. Money helps but you can´t eat it. I´ve learnt that much but one thing stands out than most — knowing how to feed yourself, your family from the land you are living on really should come before academic classrooms and computers, colleges and offices. What good are they if you have no idea how to feed yourself, or at least where the food comes from or where to go get it (in times when you may need to)? Who is teaching the kids this first basic lesson, how to live on and with the land? If we know this much the future is sound. These people hand this know-how down through the families. It´s a thing taken for granted. We may call them peasants. City folk say worse than that about such people. But to me they are ignoring a most basic treasure: if the supermarkets failed for one reason or another, who would the city folks go to for their dinner, or for that first basic lesson of how to live with the land, not to destroy it but how to work with it? Roping the pig´s feet, hanging it from a tree branch, slitting it´s throat makes you think, “What is it that lives one minute is dead the next?” If you are thinking, “Oh my god this is so disgusting” it´s understandable. Buddhists, I´m told, who like to know what reality is, sometimes meditate in cemetries, or imagine themselves in the middle of one. The idea being that our minds are so attached to our body how can life continue outside of it, or in Buddhist speak, “What is the nature of reality when everything is so impermanent?” But think really. You´ve seen “What the Bleep...” haven´t you. According to those scientists everything exists in a sea of energy, consciousness, life is that web of energy. Bodies are things that just focus that sea of energy into the experience we have when we are inside one. To get really metaphysical about it, I recall my Plant Spirit Teacher saying that “Consciousness is a tissue of appearances upon a field of energy" . That made sense to me. Life continues in one form or another. Body consciousness is great when you are making love. But not so cool when it´s breathing it´s last. Is that it? We´re very lucky. I don´t think pigs and such animals get to think about these things. When we were dragging Antonio´s pig through the garden, I noticed the pig was more interested in ploughing up the dirt foraging for last minute tasties than aware than it´s mortal life was just a few short minutes away from that last breath. Antonio appears at last with some wine after his treck into town for some cooking gas. Maria brings out some pancake-like sweets. The pigs guts have been tidied away. Fresh slices of pork are toasting in the skillet and two huge halves of meat are now in the garage. Everyone has been busy. News has been exchanged. Neighbours feel a sense of the life shared. There´s one pig less but a lot of mouths to be fed and in the yard at the top of Antonio´s garden are 6 little piglets just a few days old. “Isso é a vida”. That´s life, just a practical way of living that works in Alentejo. Does that mean we are going to keep pigs on our land? I think we´ll stick to chickens but you might find us there when something is going on in the neighbourhood. It´s a great place to learn how to live. Jonathan, 3 Feb., 2008 |
Antonio lives near Odemira, Alentejo,
Portugal with his wife Maria.
Contact Jonathan Evelight Email 'ola@rainbowcommunities.org'
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