The Pig Man

The following story is believed by a wide audience in my village. If Peace Corps has taught me anything, it is how to nod along to an out-of-this-world story and pretend like it may be feasible.

A married couple from the island of Paama had tried for many years to conceive but were never fortunate enough to have a child. They did however own a pig.

The pig was a woman pig and it became pregnant. When the pig was about to give birth, it ran away from the house but the married couple followed the pig closely. It went to a large stone and hid underneath it in a deep burrow. The married couple stood outside of the burrow and listened as the pig was delivering its litter.

The woman wanted to see how many piglets the mother pig delivered, so she lit a bundle of dry coconut leaves. She and the man peered down the burrow with their coconut leaf torch but were shocked to see a baby boy! The man used a long, curved tree branch to slowly pry the child out of the pig's burrow. Needless to say, the mother pig was upset that the married couple was trying to steal the human boy it had just given birth to. But the man proceeded to carry the new born infant and wrap it in dry banana leaves. An angry mother pig followed the married couple home as it brought back the baby boy to their house.

Anyhow, long story short- this pig is believed to have magically given birth to a boy (who just recently passed away leaving behind many children). According to custom, this man comes from the traditional line of the wild pig, so it is almost logical to some locals for this phenomenon to have occurred.

I inquired if this man and his family ate pig and was told yes, that they do indeed eat pig. Seems sort of wrong to dine on one's potential relatives though.