Raiders

Last night I apparently missed a lot of action at NPH. Feeling tired out still and needing a break, I took up one of my friend’s offers to come stay at their house in Antigua for the night. While I was enjoying a fun evening of games, talking, and dancing, NPH was being raided by locals trying to take our pigs! NPH has a pretty large pig farm with lots of pigs that we breed and butcher for internal use. Last night, approximately five local men somehow got onto the property and were trying to get to our pigs when someone saw them. Raising the alarm, NPH flung into action: the older boys from the boys house ran out of their houses yelling with the machetes they use for cutting the grass as well as big rocks which they flung at the intruders. The guard shot up a few bullets in the air to scare the intruders off, and the rest of the adults when running after the men with whatever they could find. After some action and excitement the intruders left without any of our precious pigs, the boys felt like warriors defending their own, and no one was hurt. Tonight the boys continue to patrol the grounds and every once in a while a reminder shot is fired into the air, but all is well. As I sit here in my house listening to the rain pouring on our roof I begin to think about the men trying to break in. What desperate times must they be going through to try to steal pigs from orphaned and abandoned children?