Dad and the Pig, Mum and the Sheep - 1952-ish                       (Roger Wooller 17.04.2015)

A few months before Christmas Dad had the bright idea that he’d have roast pig for a lavish Christmas Dinner on board the ship . He bought a piglet and took it aboard the ‘Liemba’ on Lake Tanganyika with the idea of feeding it on the considerable quantity of food scraps from the ship.

The pig quickly became a favoured pet, the ship’s darling, its mascot. It had free run of the entire ship from the bridge to the sailor’s quarters in the foc’sle to the grime of the engine room and the elegant calm of the first class cabins. Its preferred place was always under the awnings over the cargo hatches where the piglet could count on caresses and snacks from the third class passengers. The piglet quickly grew into a sizeable young pig, strong, fleet of foot and steady on deck in even the roughest weather. The sailors all saw him as a mate, a sea-pig, one of them.  Christmas came all too soon. When Dad gave the order for the cook to ‘prepare’ the pig for the table, there was a minor mutiny. Not one of the sailors would obey the order.

Dad was in a quandary. The Christmas dinner on board ship was commuted to roast chicken – but what to do with the pig?

Well of course he brought it home. The pig was quite docile with a rope round its neck – it was used to being tied up at times on the ship – and followed Dad up the hill from the harbour in Kigoma and out into the back yard quite happily. Us kids (Nick and I) were thrilled. A new pet was just what we wanted.

 Mum was a bit more sanguine. “There’s nowhere to keep it, we can’t keep up with its food, it’ll stink the place out, and soon it’ll be too big to do anything with. You’ll have to kill it.” And she brought out the biggest sharpest knife she had.  “Come inside you kids; this is not going to be pretty.”

Dad by this stage was feeling very unhappy about the whole thing and must have conveyed his nervousness to the pig (besides which the pig had been listening to our protestations and Mum’s verdict). The pig was visibly tense.

 As soon as Dad gripped the pig between his knees it started squealing blue murder and we kids piled outside to see what was going on. There was Dad, struggling to avoid slicing himself with the knife in his right hand whilst trying with his left to get an extremely strong and agitated pig properly oriented to have its throat cut. It was a losing battle. The pig objected strongly. There is not much to hold on to on a pig even with both hands. Too late, Dad dropped the knife and lunged for a better hold on the bucking squealing ex pet.  The pig’s final fling caught Dad off balance. As he fell, Dad grabbed for the accelerating rope then let go as he was dragged along and the rope burn bit deep. The pig, well qualified for a life at sea, headed for the wild hills behind our house to nurse his sense of betrayal and swallow the anchor forever, (or to be swallowed by a leopard, lion or hyena.)

Dad, his pride wounded, took up his rifle and made a half-hearted and useless search in the shimmering heat of the thorn scrub.  He flopped afterwards into his settler’s chair with the swinging arms for a cold lager. And I could tell from his self-deprecating laugh that he wasn’t unhappy with the outcome.

I just wondered what story he was going to tell the sailors.

The pig episode must have sparked off a realisation of the economies of slaughtering your own meat because not long after this Dad bought a fat tailed sheep and unencumbered by guilt, shot it in the backyard. He skinned and gutted it and did a fairly good job of cutting up the meat. Then it came to the tail. He was about to throw that away when Mum said “There’s a lot of good fat in that tail, I’ll render it down for cooking lard.” This she did, boiling the fat off the bone till the house reeked of mutton lard. There were trays and trays of it, filling and stinking out the fridge for months. Everything tasted of mutton fat. The fried eggs for breakfast, the roast potatoes, the Yorkshire puddings – even the usually delicious freshly cooked home-made doughnuts had to be deep fried in this bonanza of free mutton fat.

Mum seemed not to notice the rank smell; she was so pleased with her ‘bargain’. But we kids finally rebelled and the last of the trays of solidified mutton fat was given away to the family of the house servant.

“You kids just don’t know when you’re well off” She said as she handed it over.

But we did, and the moment had just started then.

We should have been prepared for the next experiment in butchering. This time it was a crocodile. Not a big one, but big enough to attack a human.  Dad was proud of himself because he’d (almost impossibly) killed it with a single shot with a .22 high velocity bullet through the eye. Anywhere else and such a tiny bullet would have glanced off.

Mum was pleased, she wanted to get a pair of crocodile skin shoes made by the Indian shoemaker in town.

Dad had made heavy weather of getting the extremely tough skin off but he was not too tired to look at all that lovely white muscle and call out “I don’t want to waste this meat, let’s at least try it”.  Mum wasn’t keen but said “If you cook it I’ll give it a go.” I looked amazed at Dad when he agreed. “But Dad, you can’t cook.” 

“Oh yes he can” Mum said, “He just doesn’t.” Dad replied “That’s because your mother is such a wonderful cook.”

While we were debating this, Dad had been quietly rummaging around in the Croc’s stomach. He was curious to see what it had been eating. A couple of bones came out, not much else. Then Dad’s face changed. 

He held up a wedding ring.

We never did get to taste Dad’s cooking.