If you can help me in any way, I would greatly appreciate
it. Thank you for reading my tale void
of romance, comedy, and action.
Hola mis amigos. Me
llamo Chancho. As if you can’t tell from
my solid, off-white appearance I am a grain of rice. My story begins before I ever met
Weston. Let’s see, time is not a gifting
of mine because I don’t have a brain, but a good while ago a former World Racer
placed a pre-metamorphosis form of myself in some soil purchased by New Song
Ministries. 
Fast forward to when I met Weston. It was a hot, rainless, bug-filled day in
Nicaragua; in other words, it was a normal day.
I was hanging out with my cousins, uncles, aunts, etc. baking away in
the sun when I saw him climbing a tree armed with a machete. His repeated swinging of the Nicaraguan
all-purpose tool at the tree limb was followed by Felipe mockingly
counting: uno, dos, tres, cuatro, etc.
until the branch fell to the ground, well out of the way of the machinery that
would soon pass by. I immediately liked
Weston because he seemed to learn quickly.
Felipe showed him a better cutting technique and he was off cutting away
at my distant relatives.
We encountered each other a little later that day. The harvest had begun but the loud rice
machinery missed me, so Weston seemed to feel it was necessary to chop out my
stalk from under me and throw me where I would be collected with a later pass. As I flew from his left hand I smelled the
sweat his shirt and underarms were collecting and noticed that his facial
expression displayed that using the machete was getting old.
What happened next was rather traumatizing. Let’s just say I was stripped down to my bare
shell, dumped onto the ground with my immediate family, and was thrown into a
saco. (Nope, that’s not Spanglish.) Now, I’ve been watching my weight, but when
Weston picked all of us up it didn’t seem to brighten his day. After he put me down I watched him and a few
others carry sack after sack onto the truck until we reached a total of 183
strong.
After some poor attempts at group pictures, we were on our
way. To where? I didn’t know and neither did he, which
seemed to make the day longer not knowing when it would end. We thought the day’s conclusion had been
reached when we went into a “me” processing plant, but our final separation was
still days away. All communication was
in Spanish so why we didn’t stay there is Greek to me.
Weston sat on top of me and took a nap until we arrived at
my new home for the next two days: an
outdoor basketball court. After all the
sacks were hauled off the tractor trailer-the guys reacted like we had gained
weight since the first time manually moving us-we were spread all over the
court to bake in the sun for two days. I
didn’t see Weston during this time, and it wasn’t until we were put into sacks
again when he finally returned. He
didn’t seem all that excited to hear that we were going on a short trip, but
maybe because it was still pretty early.
Either way it was time to move.
Unfortunately the flatbed they got could only carry half of
us, so after the guys took the rice, unloaded it at a different rice plant, and
came back Weston was holding his butt and abs like the bumpy roads had done a
disservice to him. Whatever, I’m
rice. I can’t empathize.
Upon arrival we sat for a while. I didn’t know why and Weston didn’t seem to
understand either, so he asked why us rice weren’t being unloaded and the
Nicaraguans responded by getting to work.
Either they were done resting or they realized they should
be done
resting. I think it’s the latter. After I had been unloaded, all the guys sat
on us and waited until the loud noise in the plant stopped. For the fifth time the guys moved all 183
sacks about thirty yards away to be restacked inside the shelter.
What’s a shame is that I had grown attached to Weston, but
he actually seemed excited to leave me behind.
If we ever do cross paths, I doubt he’ll even recognize me without my
shell. If you can help, please do. Please let Weston know that I’m sorry for
playing a part in causing his neck and back to chaff, cutting into his ability
to sleep in past 6:45am, and causing him to need to nap each afternoon. It would mean a lot to me. From the bottom of my heartless self,
“Thanks.”
