Until a few years ago, the only “living” pigs I ever saw in Manila were the ones that were shown cutely prancing around on TV or on the big screen. Of course, there were also pictures and illustrations of smiling or gamboling boars and piglets on print; but somehow it was not quite the same. Occasionally though, I would get a glimpse of a truck crammed with pigs on some busy thoroughfare. Their squeals would lightly pervade the closed environs of our family car. I would always notice people outside covering their noses and grimacing, as if they were suddenly plunged into an invisible but inescapable miasma.
I would watch in fascination at the packed mass of moving bodies, often saddened by the thought that that was the last time the pigs would ever experience rides again. My parents had blithely told me once that they (the pigs I mean, not my parents) would be headed for slaughter when I asked them about it. My eyes would follow the truck until the vehicle made a sudden turn to a street where our car would not go. Pretty soon the truck and animals were nothing more than another indistinguishable speck on the choked up, traffic-jammed streets of Manila.
Continue reading When Pigs Run Freely On The Streets Of Mintal