I arrive just in time for lunch. In such a small town, at such a small hotel (three rooms), it is always just in time for lunch, providing of course, that the women running the place are around. If not, it is either too early for lunch, or worse, too late. In such a small town, there is no other restaurant.

Lunch is good enough, not bad at least, and I am famished! The chicken is somewhat tough, but nothing like the tough chicken-meat fibers I had somehow chewed an digested yesterday in Tlaxiaco. The tortillas as perhaps as tired as I am. Still, I have had a warm reception, and I am now eating lots of food - most welcome in deed.

Even as I eat lunch, I can see that dinner is on its way.

Out of a garbage pail, the rooster is released from its dark and smelly prison. At first, this may seem like a good thing, even if roosters don’t have much of a sense of smell. It squawks once, possibly out of gratitude, maybe because it has been disturbed from its sleep. Either way, it seems content under the woman’s arm.

The women do not seem content; they meant business. One of them, the rooster comfortably under her arm, walks outside. The other continues with sharpening a large knife, then follows her companion out the side door, around the back and out of sight.

Left to contemplate the fate of the rooster, I continue on with my lunch. I have a feeling that dinner will be quite fresh.

From outside, a squawk. Then back to silence. The women march in, one carrying a bloodied knife, the other a bucket, with a few tail feathers drooping lifelessly over the brim. The women get to work.

The executed rooster is plunged into a large pot of boiling water to loosen its feathers. In short order, it is reduced to just another chicken, only visible to me as two feet facing upwards from inside the kitchen sink.

Hand fulls of feathers and entrails are returned to the same garbage pail from which the rooster has so recently enjoyed its last moments of life.

For me, lunch is over.