Not for the chicken hearted

How you get your chicken to the table surely says a lot about which part of civilisation you inhabit.

The guy who gets his chicken frozen from a plastic bag with a brand name lives in a different world from one who visits a supermarket and can choose his favoured bit of anatomy, who in turn is cultures away from the man who goes into the jungle to chase his lunch.

Out here it's a little better than it is in the jungle, but not much.

You can ask one of the villagers if they have a jungle chicken to spare, one of those magnificent multicoloured birds you'll often see scrabbling about in the dust or being chased by dogs. And leave it to them to do the needful. This is usually the tastiest chicken you can find.

Otherwise you head for one of the many Fresh Chicken outlets at the side of the road or in the market. These are normally open to the skies - where blood and gore rule, and crows hang around like vultures waiting for the tastiest morsels to be tossed to them.

To avoid all this I drive down the highway a little to a quiet and solitary chicken shop just off the road in the middle of nowhere. The white broiler chicken are all squawking away in an inner room. I tell the guy the size of chicken I want. I'm told a good chicken is no more than 1600 grams. The bigger ones are never tender, probably old chickens past their prime.

The guy grabs the victim and holds it over a weighing scale. Then he wrings its neck. Before it is quite dead he tosses it into a blue plastic bin and puts the lid on. What follows is a violent thrashing from inside. The bin rocks dangerously. I look at the scenery. The hills are silent and all about is quietness.

My chickens are very tasty because I make a special feed for them, the chicken guy says. And he tells me not to trust the chickens in the market. Some of them, he says, come tightly packed in a crowded van from across the border. All that stress, he says, shaking his head. How can a chicken taste good after so much suffering

While he is talking the dead chicken is taken out and its feathers ripped off. The skin is removed, the innards are pulled out and the mess is tossed onto a heap. Then the chicken is chopped up, put into a plastic bag, which is put into another plastic bag and handed over to you.

Gingerly you accept your yet-to- be cooked lunch. There is some blood and a bit of flesh sticking to the bag.

It's all enough to make you turn vegetarian.