Are there pigeons in every town?

“That’s tomorrow night’s dinner”

I didn’t know the chicken was there until we stopped for lunch. We had pushed the canoe into the riverbank and my guide, Robert, immediately walked up the bank to the shade of a large tree fond of dropping small but annoyingly hard sap-filled fruit at regular intervals, spread out a rug, and insisted I stay in the shade while he cooked lunch down at the water. As we sat on the rug and ate there was a sudden commotion down at the canoe. “What’s that?” I exclaimed. “That’s tomorrow night’s dinner,” Robert replied. A scrawny chicken, tethered to the inside of the canoe by a length of string around its leg, had flapped a little too enthusiastically and had in fact flapped itself out of the canoe and into the water, from where it was promptly rescued. The chicken behaved itself for the rest of the day and while we dined that night on mystery meat stew, it dined on a handful of grains.

I was on a trip down Madagascar’s Tsiribihina River in a traditional wooden dug-out canoe; just me and my guide Robert. The chicken’s time was up the next evening. We had again pulled the canoe against the riverbank in an area Robert deemed safe for camping (crocodiles, flooding, both?) and Robert then grabbed the hapless bird down at the water’s edge, and separated its head from the rest of it using a serrated kitchen knife. Boiled and plucked and quartered, our dinner formerly known as the chicken was placed in a steel griddle and roasted over the fire. Before long it was ready, and I had the honour of the first taste. My outward appearance I hope conveyed the delicious nature of the meat. On the inside, however, I sadly concluded that this was undoubtedly the worst chicken I had ever eaten. An old boot would have tasted like pate in comparison. But this was calorie rich food, and in these parts, food is hard to come by and is always appreciated.

That night, as I sat in the sand under a blanket of stars, I was happy to be eating anything at all.