Pig survives ‘Sendong,’ ends up as ‘lechon’

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—The poor pig escaped the wrath of Tropical Storm “Sendong” but, alas, not the yearning for festive food of its survivors to welcome the new year.

The 65-kilogram pig ended up being part of the main course of the New Year’s Eve dinner prepared by one of the families affected by the floods that swamped Cagayan de Oro City.

The pig had escaped from the December 17 floods by struggling up the staircase of the house of the family of Ailyn Naliponguit Corrales in Consolacion village in this city near the Cagayan River. It appeared almost half dead from exhaustion when the family found it.

Painful to eat it

The pig had come from upriver and had been swept away by floodwaters, unnoticed by families searching for their missing relatives among the bodies snagged in barbed wires or half-buried in the mud.

On finding the pig, the children in the neighborhood named it “Sendong,” after the storm.

Came Christmas but the Corrales family spurned the idea of making a “lechon” out of their new friend Sendong.

“It had survived, just like us. It was painful to even think of eating it for Christmas dinner,” Ailyn said.

Thanking the Lord

But toward the New Year, cash was running low and Ailyn said the pig began looking more and more like a practical way to make New Year’s Eve a little more festive under the circumstances.

“We also lost no one in the flood so there was reason to celebrate, if only as a way to thank the Lord,” she said.

Consultation

And so on the morning of December 31, the patriarch of the clan brought up the subject of slaughtering Sendong.

Ailyn said her father consulted the rest of the clan, composed of six households, and jointly decided that Sendong would be roasted to welcome 2012.

“None of us had the heart to tell the children,” Ailyn said. “So we just sort of left them to find out themselves.”

Amidala cries

But no one in the family could stomach doing the killing. They asked somebody else do it for them.

Ailyn’s daughter, 6-year-old Amidala, winced and almost cried when told later that the lechon was actually her new friend Sendong.

By New Year’s morning all that remained of Sendong was in a pot.

The new year was met with subdued celebrations in the neighborhood, one of the areas worst-hit by the floods.

More than 100 families in the neighborhood who had lost everything and who had been sleeping under a flyover in front of a church came home to be with neighbors.

Reason to smile

“We all pitched in,” Ailyn said. “Some brought sweets,  softdrinks, beer.”

Ailyn said her family set up the dinner in their old house beside a street where garbage still lay uncollected two weeks after the floods came.

“Everybody was welcome. You could tell just by looking who had it really bad,”  Ailyn said of her guests. “Their feet were unshod, still muddy. But at least there was Sendong at the dinner table and there was reason enough to smile.”

Originally posted: 11:48 am | Monday, January 2nd, 2012