New Year’s Eve involved being stood over a bucket of dead body trying to figure out whether you could eat a pig’s nipple.


I had kindly offered to host a New Year’s party at somebody else’s house. Max and Ruth were obliging when I told them this – and then Ruth found herself a visa and scuppered off on some fancy safari in Kenya – leaving Max, a researcher who had not a single connection to VSO prior to September 2006 hosting a party for 25 very energetic volunteers – as well as friends from Butare town.


That day Max and I had kindly been donated a gift of “some meat” for the party. Now nobody in Rwanda would ever turn down such a generous gift. Meat is for the wealthy out here. We built a charcoal grill from bricks, encasing coal and paper soaked in kerosene and put the grill on top. Then we started on the meat...


4 buckets of body parts was our gift.


I could not make out any remaining flesh on billy the goat. I found a heart (found in so much as it was lying on top of the liver and kidneys) and identified its haunches. Though there was little more than gristle on its hind legs the joint was still able to swing back and fro – as if galloping up a Rwandan hillside.


Then came the pig. The pig head. I don’t think I have ever stared out a dead pig. It’s eyes gazed up at me and there seemed more than a hint of chesire cat smile on its lips as if to say “Well here I am – whatchagonna do?”. And what was I going to do indeed. Head intact but there was no way I was delving inside. Then beneath the head were three or four layers of square patches of skin and fat. The skin was extremely hairy and the fat very fat. The nipples lay unobtrusively on top. I couldn’t touch them. They were too...lifelike.


Meanwhile Max next to me was repeating a mantra to his Jewish grandmother “I’m so sorry, I’m so so sorry”.


We washed our hands and went for it. Find the flesh! Find anything edible! After about an hour and having created three measly kebabs of fat we gave up.




The smiling pig had his way.





The party went very well thank you. We danced, drank, ate, sang Old Lang Syne all night (not all at the same time). And nobody minded the lack of meat. Most VSO volunteers are bloody vegetarian anyway!