Allie and the Pig

I thought of another super funny story that was told to me by another volunteer, Allie, about an experience she had here. So I´m going to share (and hopefully tell it as well as she did).
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Allie and the Pig

Allie, a Peace Corps volunteer, lives in a quaint little house in a small community somewhere in the middle of northwestern El Salvador. As most Peace Corps volunteers do, she lives as the locals live - eating eggs, beans, and tortillas, speaking another language all day everyday, waking up at 4 AM when the roosters start crowing and the bread man starts his bicycle route, announcing his presence during his route with a cross between a horn and a bell going off every couple of seconds. And she´s learned to live with all the stray animals exploring around throughout the day - cows, horses, pigs, dogs, cats, lizards, frogs, snakes, mice, etc.

Many people don´t know what it´s like to be a Peace Corps volunteer. Allie had finished one year in country and still had one ahead of her. This is exactly the point in time when Peace Corps volunteers tend to lose their patience and sanity and Allie was no exception. The pig across the street just gave her a reason.

Allie woke up one morning feeling that her mattress and pillow had been indoors too long; they were started to smell of mold and mildew as most things in El Salvador do during the rainy season. So, like everyone in El Salvador does, Allie found a spot in her front yard where she could sun her mattress and pillows to dry out the humidity/rain water that had accumulated during the last few weeks. The area, of course, was covered in mud due to the rain that had fallen the night before, so she brought out 4 chairs to hold her mattress up while it dried.

Everything was great. There they were, drying out in the hot sun. She decided to go inside to pack up some things for her upcoming trip to the capital.

Just as she entered her room, she heard an odd sound outside. She waited for a moment, and then out of curiosity, walked to the door to see what was going on outside. As she approached the door, she saw her mattress laying in the middle of the mud, her pillow a few yards away, with feathers covering the muddy ground, and the next door pig happily trotting away.

As you can imagine, when a person is already feeling unraveled, this tiny problem grows in magnitude to something that you would think would cause the end of the planet´s existence.

As any normal 1-year PCV would do, she angrily stomped outside, yanked her mattress and pillow up into her arms (causing more feathers to start flying around her), and furiously marched across the street to her woman neighbor´s house where she just began screaming at the top of her lungs and waving around her pillow (again causing feathers to fly everywhere).

"LOOOOOOK at what your STUPID PIG did to my stuff!!!!! I HATE your pig! I´ve told you before to keep that stupid thing TIED UP! WHAT is wrong with you??! WHAT am I going to do NOW??!! The next time that pig comes anywhere CLOSE to my house, I´m getting out my machete and STABBING IT until it dies and then I´m CUTTING IT UP into a thousand pieces!!!! THAT´S what I think about your PIG!!!"

Of course, all of this yelling and feathers flying caused interest from the other neighbors, so by the end, she was covered in the white pillow feathers and had an audience of her community members standing in front of their homes watching the gringa entertainment. Just as she finished describing her killing methods, she gained a moment of clarity and thought, "What am I doing? I need to breathe."

She lowered the pillow and mattress and just concentrated on breathing while looking at her neighbor woman. The woman just stared back for about 15 seconds, then slowly turned to the pig and....started yelling at the pig.

"What were you thinking??!! Look at what you did, you stupid pig!" And then started whipping it as the pig started squealing and running away.

Allie just lowered her head, turned around, and walked back into her house dragging her mud-covered mattress and now lifeless pillow.

She continues to dislike the pig. As far as we know, the pig has not returned to visit Allie. Stay tuned for more developments in the next year.