Every day travels

A knock on the door announces the vet. He is a short man and like a pink caterpillar a scar joins the corner of his mouth with his earlobe. It seems to elongate his smile and only adds to his good-humored self. He introduces himself as Fernando and tells me to follow him.
So we leave the stuffy mud hut of my Ecuadorian homestay and step out into the wide-open space of the Andean highlands. Across the grassland, Fernando leads me to the farm’s pigpen. In it a young boar grunts as unknowingly as I smile obliviously, still excited to help out the community’s vet.
But Fernando just nods towards it.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Catch it!” he replies and smirks.
In disbelief I stare at the boar, at the vet and back again. The animal on the contrary seems to have grasped its impending doom way before me, because it suddenly darts from one corner of its box to the next. I am hopeless in catching the brown bolt. Until, out of nowhere, a helping farmer jumps into the square and buries the squeaking pig under his body.
The animal’s ensuing cry is so shrill, almost child-like, that it drowns every clear thought. Maybe that’s why I throw myself on the squirming animal as well. Quickly Fernando, readying his knife, joins us. With a coarse rope the front and hind legs of the struggling pig are tied up. Then, to stop it wiggling, we tip it on the side. The second man holds the bundled up legs and I am asked to clasp the animal by the ear and put my weight on the side of its neck.
I dread the upcoming slit of the throat, the pulsating gush of blood. Nausea rises within me… But it never happens! Fernando moves to the rear of the pig.
He kneels down. The incision is quick. The testicles, like two peeled figs, extracted. I have to avert my eyes. When I squint back the empty scrotum is already stitched up and is being treated with lemon juice.
“The world’s cheapest disinfectant,” Fernando laughs.
The pig and me wince. He continues to explain how too much testosterone makes the flesh bitter. “Therefore the pigs have to be castrated when they are young.”
We finally release the neutered boar. Whimpering he trots away.
Breathless, I also get up on my wobbly knees as a handful of farmers, who have gathered during the ordeal, join us and pat me on my back with an air of acknowledgement.
In their looks I can see, I have passed some sort of test and it is time to celebrate this at the vet's home with lots of cheap sugar cane liquor, laughter, music and dance.