Juddles I relate to this.working around my veggie garden today.The doves come to our Brazilian cherries knowing I will keep the mynas away.The blue tongue comes out to bask in the sun probably knowing I will accidently drop a worm nearby.
&juddles - A wake up call that that others have lives I cannot even imagine. Keep safe.How many people drink with a pig? Let’s leave the QPS out of this. (former life)
Strange question, but reflects my strange life. And it makes me rejoice.
No, I am not really drinking “with” the pig. But as I sit in the street alone, having a rum, the pig lays at my feet.
I am in Norosi, Sur de Bolivar, Colombia. A small and decrepit village in a conflict zone. Forget your Pablo Escobar movie stuff. This is real, raw, and nasty. Not romantic. Not at all.
This is a very, very poor town. In an age where the planet is flooded with cheap toys and advertising, the children here have none. They still play with rocks and make-shift toys made from discarded rubbish. But they are happy
The biggest advance in the last few years is that the government has paved a couple of the streets here. It is a town of dry dust and rubbish for part of the year, and mud and horrendous smells the rest. There is no real infrastructure. Most is dirt and weeds, with the occasional household that plant a tree or two with flowers. There are no street gutters, really no streets. No sewerage system. The town water supply is pumped straight from a mining-destroyed river. Each house does whatever it can to make do. There is electricity part of the time, but not tonight. I have a generator, which can give me light and energy to sit and write. But I am the only one in this street to have such thing. The rest of the town went to bed early, as there is nothing to do without power.
That genset saves me right now, but it is also something I rarely use. To have power and light and civilization, when your neighbours do not, is something that I cannot stomach. It is a bit like having food when the person next to you is hungry. I prefer to go hungry too….
But tonight it is raining. Hard, very hard. The noise of that rain masks the noise of my genset. So I can use it without giving my neighbours the double kick in the guts of them not only having no light, but having to listen to my engine.
But the genset only gives me enough for some lights and my laptop. No aircon. So I sit outside in the street in the cool of the rain in yet another nauseating hot and humid night. Oblivious to those flying things that devour me. Here you learn not to care…..
We have an overhanging roof out the front over a small concrete slab at the entrance to the house, which is where I sit now. And although the rain bounces off my truck into this area, there is a small patch that still remains dry. And this pig has found this to sleep in, and happily dream his piggy happy dreams.
Pigs do dream. I always suspected so, but this one proves it to me. In the same way dogs do, it moves in its sleep, its little feet do movements like it is running, its mouth moves in what almost appear to be human smiles. It makes little gleeful grunts and snorts. I can tell it is having a happy dream
I wonder what a pig dreams of? What dreams make him so happy? Maybe he dreams of a great cassava find he made in his short piggy life? A food bonanza! Or maybe, as a male, he remembers a sexy girl pig that lives around the corner? But I actually feel, through careful observation and sheer reading his piggy body language, that he is in a deeper bliss – he is remembering PLAYING, as all young animals do, with other piglets. He is dreaming of his youth. I get that.
I also get that he will not be slain tonight. His destiny is to be eaten. A reality in this world. But for tonight he is not just at peace, he is happy. And in the shelter of my front porch, he is dry and safe. And when I came out and sat with him, his initial distrust disappeared quickly. In seconds he was back asleep, having decided I was ok. I love that most animals feel that way about me. Most people do not.
He is a healthy pig. In a zone where many animals are at death’s door, this one is fat and content. He is dirty, as I am. Everything you touch here is mud and filth. If I get in my bed or sleep outside on the concrete with him, there is no real difference. I look at his skin, and his coarse hair, and although stained by that mud, he is ok. His ear twitches, dislodging a pesky mosquito, but he is not covered in ticks. He is restless, and gets up and readjusts. I see the large beetle that has fallen on him, attracted by the light. Eventually they come to some sort of accord. The beetle is not biting him, and he drifts back to where he really wants to be – that return to youth.
A light in the street startles me. Have been so busy pondering the pig I forgot where I am. I see someone walking in the rain with a small torch. I do an instant assessment and decide a bad person would not use a torch.
This is a conflict zone. That means that there are rebels. This town is past an invisible line between the Colombia governed by the State, and the Colombia that remains without law. So by night in this town, the police huddle in their fort. And the streets belong to others. I know that due to the rain the government helicopters cannot operate, so in nights of rain the rebels descend into the town from their mountain strongholds.
Maybe they will come tonight. But I feel they will not. A feeling based possibly on no real idea and a relaxing rum. But I sit here in the street, calm. Which is rare for me.
Maybe that peace the pig feels from me is returned. I just know it is ok tonight to be visible.
And this calm, this feeling of security, allows me to digress from work, the incessant pressures, and for a few small hours ponder other things.
And that is what makes me rejoice. I am in the middle of nowhere, work is Hell, but I have taken the moment to “stop and smell the roses”, albeit in a different way.
And in the clarity (?) that exhaustion and sweat and rain and rum induces, I am flapping happy.
I am truly flapping happy.
I’ve just been watching Narcos. Are you OK?How many people drink with a pig? Let’s leave the QPS out of this. (former life)
Strange question, but reflects my strange life. And it makes me rejoice.
No, I am not really drinking “with” the pig. But as I sit in the street alone, having a rum, the pig lays at my feet.
I am in Norosi, Sur de Bolivar, Colombia. A small and decrepit village in a conflict zone. Forget your Pablo Escobar movie stuff. This is real, raw, and nasty. Not romantic. Not at all.
This is a very, very poor town. In an age where the planet is flooded with cheap toys and advertising, the children here have none. They still play with rocks and make-shift toys made from discarded rubbish. But they are happy
The biggest advance in the last few years is that the government has paved a couple of the streets here. It is a town of dry dust and rubbish for part of the year, and mud and horrendous smells the rest. There is no real infrastructure. Most is dirt and weeds, with the occasional household that plant a tree or two with flowers. There are no street gutters, really no streets. No sewerage system. The town water supply is pumped straight from a mining-destroyed river. Each house does whatever it can to make do. There is electricity part of the time, but not tonight. I have a generator, which can give me light and energy to sit and write. But I am the only one in this street to have such thing. The rest of the town went to bed early, as there is nothing to do without power.
That genset saves me right now, but it is also something I rarely use. To have power and light and civilization, when your neighbours do not, is something that I cannot stomach. It is a bit like having food when the person next to you is hungry. I prefer to go hungry too….
But tonight it is raining. Hard, very hard. The noise of that rain masks the noise of my genset. So I can use it without giving my neighbours the double kick in the guts of them not only having no light, but having to listen to my engine.
But the genset only gives me enough for some lights and my laptop. No aircon. So I sit outside in the street in the cool of the rain in yet another nauseating hot and humid night. Oblivious to those flying things that devour me. Here you learn not to care…..
We have an overhanging roof out the front over a small concrete slab at the entrance to the house, which is where I sit now. And although the rain bounces off my truck into this area, there is a small patch that still remains dry. And this pig has found this to sleep in, and happily dream his piggy happy dreams.
Pigs do dream. I always suspected so, but this one proves it to me. In the same way dogs do, it moves in its sleep, its little feet do movements like it is running, its mouth moves in what almost appear to be human smiles. It makes little gleeful grunts and snorts. I can tell it is having a happy dream
I wonder what a pig dreams of? What dreams make him so happy? Maybe he dreams of a great cassava find he made in his short piggy life? A food bonanza! Or maybe, as a male, he remembers a sexy girl pig that lives around the corner? But I actually feel, through careful observation and sheer reading his piggy body language, that he is in a deeper bliss – he is remembering PLAYING, as all young animals do, with other piglets. He is dreaming of his youth. I get that.
I also get that he will not be slain tonight. His destiny is to be eaten. A reality in this world. But for tonight he is not just at peace, he is happy. And in the shelter of my front porch, he is dry and safe. And when I came out and sat with him, his initial distrust disappeared quickly. In seconds he was back asleep, having decided I was ok. I love that most animals feel that way about me. Most people do not.
He is a healthy pig. In a zone where many animals are at death’s door, this one is fat and content. He is dirty, as I am. Everything you touch here is mud and filth. If I get in my bed or sleep outside on the concrete with him, there is no real difference. I look at his skin, and his coarse hair, and although stained by that mud, he is ok. His ear twitches, dislodging a pesky mosquito, but he is not covered in ticks. He is restless, and gets up and readjusts. I see the large beetle that has fallen on him, attracted by the light. Eventually they come to some sort of accord. The beetle is not biting him, and he drifts back to where he really wants to be – that return to youth.
A light in the street startles me. Have been so busy pondering the pig I forgot where I am. I see someone walking in the rain with a small torch. I do an instant assessment and decide a bad person would not use a torch.
This is a conflict zone. That means that there are rebels. This town is past an invisible line between the Colombia governed by the State, and the Colombia that remains without law. So by night in this town, the police huddle in their fort. And the streets belong to others. I know that due to the rain the government helicopters cannot operate, so in nights of rain the rebels descend into the town from their mountain strongholds.
Maybe they will come tonight. But I feel they will not. A feeling based possibly on no real idea and a relaxing rum. But I sit here in the street, calm. Which is rare for me.
Maybe that peace the pig feels from me is returned. I just know it is ok tonight to be visible.
And this calm, this feeling of security, allows me to digress from work, the incessant pressures, and for a few small hours ponder other things.
And that is what makes me rejoice. I am in the middle of nowhere, work is Hell, but I have taken the moment to “stop and smell the roses”, albeit in a different way.
And in the clarity (?) that exhaustion and sweat and rain and rum induces, I am flapping happy.
I am truly flapping happy.
