Hog Heaven

Kelly woke me up at 6:30 am, whispered through my mosquito net, "David, they want to begin soon".  I crawled under the net, disentangled myself from it, and put my sick, sore, muddy body into some clothes.  

I walked to the village of Pyramid the day before and was deceived about the distance.  The boys said 'a guy can walk it in four hours', so I was questioning my masculinity seven hours in to the hike.  And it was no mere 'walk'.  There were landslides to navigate, ridges looming thousands of feet above to hike, rivers to cross on hanging bridges with rotten wood, all under a sky with no atmosphere to protect us from the equatorial sun.  Several times I glanced down to see my socks saturated in blood, so I'd stop and pick off the leeches.  Don't get me wrong, it was an adventure (that I'm glad is behind me), I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't gain some sick sense of pride from it.

I came to Pyramid to see my friend Kellion, who's family was hosting a bakarbatu.  Literally translated from Bahasa Indonesia, 'bakarbatu' means cooking stone.  It's an eons-old tradition of cooking a pig in the ground.  

A bakarbatu is reserved for very special occasions, as they're a lot of work and pigs are a huge portion of wealth.  A pig is killed for a birth, a death, a marriage, a homecoming, or a great accomplishment.  In this case, a class at the Bible school in Pyramid was graduating.  Kelly's father is the director of the school, and above is his pig.   

A good amount of time was spent trying to apprehend the animal.  It was clear that these guys really enjoyed this process and it wasn't to be rushed.  

 The pig's snout was tied with grass to muffle its ear-piecing squealing.  I followed Kelly's family who followed the pig-bearer to the meeting grounds.  The whole community would come out for this event, each family bringing gifts of food to share.  

When the community gathered there heard that we approached, they hushed, and the master of ceremonies cried 'wa wa wa wa wa wa...'.  This word is Lani for 'respect' and 'thank you', and it's sound is repeated quickly to generate an atmosphere of respect.    

I couldn't help shuddering at the sights and sounds that followed.  The shrieking pigs sound very similar to screaming humans, and I was reminded of the strangest idea.  Pigs are genetically very similar to humans, thus they've been tried for organ transplants in humans.  This stomach-turning reality led me to imagine the similarity of this process to cannibalism, which is so recent in this culture's past.  This thought process, which drove through my mind like a train without a conductor, almost drove me to vegetarianism.  But not quite.   

This celebration was exceptionally large.  About twenty pigs were killed that day, which is larger than most weddings.  Field anthropologists who had come to the Baliem Valley 50 years ago said that they could identify the significance of an event by the number of pigs changing hands or killed.  For a people group with a diet lacking almost any protein, this was a mouth-watering event.  Call me a cannibal, but my mouth was no exception, as I've been trying to get used to the diet, myself.  For me, the whole event was bringing a brand new meaning to the term 'hog heaven'.  

There were so many traditions I couldn't begin to understand.  Kelly explained that if a pig resisted death and kept fighting after it was mortally wounded that it was a very bad omen for the community.  He said it signaled war, famine, and all kinds of misfortune.  He said the smaller the pig was, the darker the omen.  A very young pig did just that as I watched an old man crouch down and whisper to the pig.  The pig continued to fight for a long time.

Kelly and I returned to the honai with some old me for tea while we waited for the workers to finish cooking all the various foods in the earth ovens.  Traditionally, what I experienced in the honai would be considered taboo, and I wouldn't share it with anyone else.  Kelly said it's ok these days, but that story will have to wait for another time.  

When we returned to the community meeting grounds, masses of villagers were huddled together in different groups.  Each area was marked off by a stick in the ground.  The people were being sorted by their status.  Kelly brought me to sit with some common people.  The status system in Papua is part of what keeps the people in bondage.  It's what keeps the poor people poor and the Javanese in power, it's what keeps their identity in the dirt and their hope deflated.  Kelly's father, invited us to sit with the highest status, but Kelly shook his head.  He told me 'I've spoken with my parents about this before, but they're too old to change'.  

I was honored with thick layers of fat and skin with hair that hadn't been incinerated.  I couldn't help but indulge their generosity, and after waiting for slug of protein for so long, I didn't mind the strange delicacy so much.