searching for pork

Here in Uganda, you don’t know who is a Muslim, who’s a Christian, or anything else. Unless the Muslim men are wearing their certain kind of hat or the women have their head covered, you can’t tell the difference. Of course, this is true anywhere, but assuming you know someone's beliefs can cause big problems here. You have to be mindful of what you say and sensitive to the various cultures and religions. This is not a problem, just something to be aware of.

After a short time of living here, I realized that you can’t buy pork very easily. I knew that I could get it in the city at places that are frequented by foreigners, but I couldn’t get it in the village.
One day, Boaz (a general laborer that was helping us with a lot of projects) and Henry (the welder), we’re taking a break from their work. They were sitting in the shade of the storage building and the dogs were eating something near them. I learned that they had given the dogs some scraps of something.

When I went over, Boaz told me they had pork and offered me a taste. I accepted and it tasted fabulous! I asked where they got it. Apparently it was available not too far away. They explained to me that because of the large Muslim population, normal butchers do not sell pork and you can’t find it on the main roads. The people who sell pork basically sell it in the back. Now, I can’t explain it exactly like they did but I wish you could have been standing there. It was like there were telling me where to get some illegal substance or black market items. They told me that they’d take me to a “pork joint” so that I’d know where to buy it.

It became my own personal joke that they were going to introduce me to a pork dealer.  Sure enough, this past week Henry introduced Floyd and me to a pork dealer. I’m not even kidding you when I say that we had to walk to the back side of the village. We parked the car on the main road by Henry’s welding shop and then started walking. At first we were in an area where I had been to buy tomatoes and other things, but we kept walking. In the last building, there was a hook with a little meat hanging off of it. We thought that was all he had, but when we asked, he opened a small door and pulled out a big chunk of pork. Apparently he had plenty and he would even cook it if you wanted him to prepare it for you.

To top it off, after we visited for a few minutes and he had weighed out a kilo for us, we got even more news. Apparently, speaking Luganda, he asked Henry to tell us that his son, Regan, goes to our school. Of course, I knew his son because his name is like my Raegan’s. In Uganda Regan is only a boy’s name, unlike America where it can be male or female.  I had thought he looked familiar when we came up and another familiar looking man had come up on a boda and asked if we remembered him. In addition to the pork, we bought some scraps and bones from him for our dogs.

We went back yesterday for another kilo of pork and scraps for the dogs and he was excited to see us again. Since it was the weekend, Regan was there, so we were able to greet him as well.