Why you should never eat South American pork

Saturday 4 April, 2009


"Pigs are the worst," my uncle says authoritatively, rolling a cigarette. "Sure, anacondas have eaten members of the crew more than once... I mean, the jungle's a dangerous place. But let me tell you a story about pigs."

He lights his smoke, takes a puff, and looks at me.

"Back when we had a crew working in Bolivia, we were in the jungle east of Santa Cruz, almost on the border with Brazil. Anyway, we were coming back to the city on what we used to call the Bullet Train - it was a bus on rails. Real rails, trains used them too, but a bus. Like a coach. It was a fourteen-hour trip because this thing only went about 20 miles an hour. We were sitting in there, playing cards, drinking, laughing, as this thing trundled through Bolivia. We had hostesses, the works.

"Anyway. In the middle of the night we hit a bump, and the Bullet Train comes screeching to a stop. 'What's going on?' we're all asking the driver. 'Oh no,' he says, 'we just ran over a man and killed him.' 'What??'

"So we all jump off the train and run outside while the driver backs it up a little, and sure enough, there's a dead man on the tracks. A bum or a worker, you know, they walk along the tracks and sometimes they're drunk and they fall asleep on the rails and accidents happen.

"And as we're getting off the train, this guy's been dead for less than a minute, you know, and a pig comes trotting out of the bushes and starts eating him. Right away. Body's still warm. He could have been sleeping, except for the blood. Pigs are disgusting. You want to commit the perfect crime, use a pig. Like the mafia does.They know what they're doing."

He stubs out his cigarette.

"And that's why you should never eat South American pork."