In the season just before we found out that Ahab* was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, I was trying to help him start a small business. Ahab was a sharp man with many skills, but he had strangely gone without work for quite some time. Looking back, this should have been another warning sign. What was really going on was that Ahab was unwilling to work another real job since he believed he deserved a ministry salary – especially now that our church plant was meeting in his house. But it took some time for this to come out.
In the meantime, I tried to help him start an illegal pig meat business. At the time, I wasn’t really thinking through the legality of everything, just trying to see if the concept would work. But yes, afterward we found out that we were indeed violating a number of Islamic social and import/export laws. Alas, it was for a good cause.
I was eager to see if I could help this potential elder start a small business that would provide for his family’s needs in a climate where outspoken believers often face many hurdles to gainful employment. At that time, most locals only lived on $500 a month or less. So, a small business only needed to bring in several hundred dollars a month in profit to be significantly helpful for a family like Ahab’s.
During this first term of ours overseas, my mind was aflame with dozens of business ideas that locals could start. Many of these ideas came from noticing what wasn’t yet available in our area compared to much of the developed world. And one product that was simply nowhere to be found was pork or pig meat of any kind.
This is not too hard to understand since we live in an Islamic country. Yet I was surprised that there was almost no infrastructure whatsoever for selling pork products to the growing population of foreigners. I remember once seeing a store section in Dubai labeled, PORK – NOT FOR MUSLIMS! Our grocery stores had no such sections with intimidating signage. Every once in a while an alcohol store would sell some canned spam of some sort. But even this was a rarity.
Some of our colleagues had decided not to eat pork for the sake of witness. But since eating pork didn’t lead to any loss of relationships in our local culture, others of us decided that we would occasionally partake as a way to point toward gospel freedom, bless local believers, and simply enjoy one of God’s good gifts. But those of us who partook had to content ourselves with precooked bacon or packages of pepperoni occasionally carried over in suitcases. Once, I won an American canned ham in a white elephant Christmas game. That was a good Christmas.
However, I knew that there were abundant wild pigs up in the mountains. Many locals would hunt them for sport. Some would even cook what they killed, bragging to close friends about eating something that had been forbidden to them all their lives.
Putting two and two together, one day I asked Ahab if he knew anyone who regularly went pig hunting.
“Yes, my son-in-law who lives just over the border.”
Like many families, and like our people group as a whole, Ahab’s kinfolk treated international borders much more casually than Westerners would. After all, their people group had been living in these mountains for millennia. Empires rose, kingdoms fell, borders changed – and their people group was still there, fighting rival tribes, marrying women from those same tribes, herding livestock, robbing caravans, and trading between ancestral areas as they pleased. In fact, because of this arbitrary imposition of borders by outsiders, smuggling is still viewed as an honorable trade here. The modern state in all its rigidity continues to gain power and permanence, but for now, the older tribal and semi-nomadic ways still regularly violate its borders and thereby call its legitimacy into question.
“Brother Ahab, could your son-in-law ever bring us pig meat to sell to the foreigners here?”
“Yes… Yes, he could do that. He goes hunting all the time and then comes to visit us or we go to visit them at least once a month.”
“Well,” I continued, “I’m not sure yet, but there might be enough interest among the foreigners such that there would be a monthly demand for fresh pig meat.”
Later that night, I posted a question on one of the expat Facebook pages. “Would anyone be interested in buying fresh wild pig meat were we to start selling it?”
Now, I tend to be an optimist when it comes to business ideas, but the response I got surprised even me. Dozens of expats from at least two big cities said they would be eager to buy wild pig meat from us were we to start selling it. All of a sudden, a plan was coming together.
A few weeks later, we had our first batch of fresh mountain boar meat. These cuts of meat were for us to cook, in hopes that we could develop a good recipe to recommend to buyers.
“Did they give your son-in-law any trouble at the border?” I asked Ahab, worried about what the Islamic border guards might do if they discovered someone transporting haram (Islam’s term for defiling) meat across the border.
“No trouble at all! They asked what it was and he truthfully said, ‘Meat.’ Look at it,” he said, pointing into the cooler full of rich red slabs of mountain pig, “It looks red like cow meat, so they let them right on through.”
Here, our local language did us a favor. The most common term for animal meat in daily usage is a generic one that doesn’t distinguish what animal that meat is coming from. It could be cow, lamb, goat – or pig. The listener doesn’t know unless he asks a specific follow-up question. Even then, the common answer might be given as ‘beast meat’ as opposed to ‘bird meat,’ and the specific beast still might not be named. So, we had at least two levels of linguistic cover.
My wife and I looked up a recipe online for cooking wild pig meat and decided to try one that involved cooking the meat in a slow cooker with garlic, onions, salt and pepper, and red wine. I went down the street to the same liquor store where I had once bought vodka to try and treat a mold infestation.
“I need some red wine for cooking pig meat!” I said, the clerks shaking their heads at these wild excuses I kept giving them for why I was buying alcohol.
For the taste test meal, we invited two other local believers to come and try it with us, serving it with Dijon mustard and barbecue sauces for dipping. Even after soaking in its slow cooker brew, the meat still proved to taste much gamier than normal pork would. Yet it was tender, juicy, and still contained rich flavors that hinted at this wild porker’s distant relation to the pink farm swine so long domesticated in the West.
The foreigners would enjoy this. The local believers? Hit or miss. One of our guests liked it. The other one, unfortunately, pledged afterward to never eat pork again – a vow I believe he has kept to this day. In his defense, when you’ve been told your whole life that pork is the most disgusting and unclean thing you can possibly eat, this can be quite the hurdle to overcome. Regardless of what his tastebuds told him, his mind was convinced it would make him sick. In hindsight, we really should have started him out with bacon, not roast of feral pig. Every local believer we’ve introduced to bacon first has afterward joined us in a long-term enjoyment of this delicious meat of the new covenant.
Having found a recipe we were mostly satisfied with, we then began advertising to the expat Facebook community. The first orders were placed and fulfilled. More cross-border trips took place without any issues. New orders came in. Things were looking promising.
Unfortunately, right about this time is when other local believers started approaching us with very concerning things that Ahab was saying to them behind closed doors. So naturally, our small business efforts halted and then came to an end in parallel to our hopes for Ahab’s future leadership in the church. In the following weeks and months, it became apparent that Ahab was not who he seemed to be, but that we had a very skillful deceiver on our hands. Among many more serious things, this meant that the fledgling pig meat business would also have to come to an end.
In the years since we’ve not attempted it again. Yes, the later revelations that it was technically illegal were one part of this. But the concept still comes up every now and then. Just last week I was talking to our kids’ school director about small business ideas for the students as they learn about entrepreneurship.
“We need a decent sausage business here!” I told her. “There are no good sausages or hot dogs available whatsoever. Even if it’s only some good beef and chicken franks, I’m convinced there’s a market here for it among the expats and locals who have come back from Europe.”
“And…” I continued, “Maybe you could have a secret menu of pork sausages.”
I do know it’s not illegal here for Christians to sell pork products to other Christians, so we may yet have a sausage company here someday. But yes, this time we’d be careful to do some legal research ahead of time. We’ll also keep things simple by sourcing our feral pigs domestically. No international smuggling required – just a trusty local hunter with a good rifle and decent cooler.
And if, in the good providence of God, our illegal pig meat operation with Ahab somehow eventually contributes to a solid small business for some missionary kids, then that would be worth celebrating. All things for good. Even ill-conceived pig meat smuggling operations.
If you would like to help us purchase a vehicle for our family as we serve in Central Asia (4k currently needed), you can reach out here.
Our kids’ Christian school here in Central Asia has an immediate need for a teacher for the combined 2nd and 3rd grade class. An education degree and some experience is required, but the position is salaried, not requiring support raising. If interested, reach out here!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
*Names of locals changed for security
Photos are from Unsplash.com
Entrusted to the Dirt 