kunya bebia

charcutiers
Originally uploaded by jlovegren.

these were questions i asked of loafers and busybodies. there are charcutiers. i know this because i have seen them and met them personally. they have sold me pork before. the guys in the picture may or may not be actual charcutiers, but they were selling pork at sa'a ntchen when i went. someone told me that the butchers generally require a fee of 5000 francs, five liters of raphia wine, and 2 kg of prepared pork to be able to declare a pig fit for consumption then kill and butcher it. this was considered to be a reasonable fee until the day that the charcutiers were reported to have butchered a pig that had already died of african swine flu. people took the meat home. when they burned off the hair and scrubbed the bristles off the virus entered the air and infected living pigs. three died in anya, including one pregnant sow with ten piglets. perhaps more died in njenawum or mbin. i don't know if any of this is true, but it is surely based on the truth. after this incident pig owners in anya boycotted the directives of the ministry of agriculture and refused to do business with the licensed butchers. anya is awash in black market pork and a pig hasn't been killed in the usual stall on anzoah for at least six weeks, as far as i remember. people do not mind killing their own pigs without paying any royalties, though no one believes this situation can persist much longer. pig owners advertise by word of mouth and carry notebooks in their pockets. when someone claims they will buy some pork, they note their name and the number of kilos, including any special indications. now we buy pork like we would buy cocaine. you know a guy that is sitting on a few kilos and he's looking for people to unload it on. you agree to come to his house at such and such a time and everyone knows the standard prices. three small sheets of corrugated iron were laid out. two sheets were placed together and they dump her out onto it. she is washed off. a young man with a very sharp machete cuts all the skin around her neck and hacks through the neckbone. the head is removed and placed on the third sheet. now he cuts the skin around the midsection and the innards spill out. these are placed next to the head and an old woman comes out of the crowd to stake a claim on one of the parts. she called it a certain word and i remembered this and wrote it down. it looks like a chamber that would come between stomach and intestine. they cut the back bone and cut the hind parts into two quarters. now people start to crowd around the guys with the scale. we press our money into nkem ngwehjong's hand so he knows how many kilos and the man with the machete starts preparing people's orders. they bring out a calculator for transparency. the whole thing took about an hour and a half. i went home and burned the hair off on my gas stove and scrubbed the skin and washed it. i made curry and shared with my neighbor.