Los coches y el cochino

[First written as an email in May 2012, the fieldwork was not going well at this point and this day, which I found in parts awful and in parts hilarious, served pretty well as a metaphor for the first six weeks or so in Yucatán.]

Coche – car; Cochino – pig

Los coches

So… I need to buy a car. I knew this, but foolishly allowed myself to be swayed by people who said I didn’t and could borrow one. This means I now need a car really fairly urgently and am having to try to talk about cars (a subject I know nothing about) in Spanish (a language I appear to be getting worse at every day). Helpfully, I have a couple of guys here who are willing to help me, which is really nice of them. So we trundled off around Merida looking at car after car. Because of the unbelievably hardcore nature of my fieldwork I need something in the ‘Chelsea tractor’ style: a pick-up or a jeep.

This part of the day was pretty tedious and involved me staring at a series of over-priced and under-performing trucks whilst pretending I knew what I was doing and what I was being told. I did discover that I really want a jeep wrangler – a sort of cross between a beach buggy and an environmentalist’s worst nightmare (they do gallons to the mile, I think). Played about in one for a bit before gradually realising that it really was a pile of crap.

If I haven’t already told you, it is hot here. Really, really hot. I think it was 38 in the shade today. I was not in the shade for most of today. At one point I think I received a third degree burn from concrete when I tried to check the CV joint on a jeep. This was followed by the realisation that I have only a passing idea of what a CV joint looks like, and less than a hope-in-hell’s chance of assessing one’s roadworthyness. Having rolled around underneath a few cars and sweated more than is really pleasant, I came to terms with the fact that today would work as a metaphor for my six weeks here: a lot of sweating, a lot of people met, utter failure to have anything to show for it. Using my hilarious Spanish, I conveyed this to my two helpers and off we go.

After a while, I realise that I don’t actually know where we’re going, so ask. The reply:

“To Mario [helper #2]’s house”

Excellent. Brief silence followed by some Spanish that I don’t  really understand. It’s repeated and I get something along the lines of “have you ever driven into/with/on a dead animal?”. “Why, no!” says I. Some amusement all round. Then something along the lines of “have you ever vomited whilst driving?”. “Again, no” I reply. More amusement and bafflement. “Have you?” I ask. “Yes! Hundreds of times!”. Laughs all round and I duck out of the conversation, as the fact I have no idea what is going on will soon become apparent.

El cochino

So we drive to Mario’s house. Meet his Dad, say hi, wonder why we’re here. Mario backs our truck up to a shed with some chickens and pigs in. Everyone gets out and wanders into the shed. I follow, more to get out of the heat (see earlier) than anything. We reach the pigs in the shed. One is definitely not enjoying itself, having died earlier in the day. Mario open’s its pen, grabs a foot and pulls. Oh… this is why we’re here. Angel [helper #1] grabs another foot and pulls. I’m left with the ears. We all pull and get Piggy, considerably bigger than any of us, moving. We pause for a sec, drag it to the back of the pick-up, load it up. Loading it up was particularly hilarious/horrific and involved tail pulling, rather more pig blood than I’m comfortable with and some fairly intricate pig-origami to fit it in.

Brief pause whilst we help Mario’s dad with some heavy (non-porcine) lifting and we’re back in the truck. Me, my two amigos and an enormous dead pig. “A donde vamos?” I ask, “una fiesta?”.

Post-script

Sadly piggy was not a housewarming gift, having succumbed to some kind of poison (faintly worrying now I give it proper thought) and instead we went to a horrendous, enormous rubbish dump (the metaphor for my PhD gets stronger by the minute) and unloaded piggy to give the hundreds of vultures something better than plastic bags to play with (not sure who the vultures are in the metaphor, but I’m sure they fit somewhere). I returned to my hostel in town and realised that not having any breakfast or lunch before ten hours of standing in the sun and heavy pig-lifting is not the best idea. I go to restaurant just in time to realise I’m having some kind of hypo-glycaemic incident (uncontrollable sweating and shaking mainly – Sammy and Owen know what these are like from Corsica) and retreat to a shop to speed it crisps and chocolate until I can see again. Go to restaurant, eat two meals and write this email. Good day!