I watched, horrified by the callousness. The treatment was inhumane. The cruelty was displayed with the slapstick of cartoons.

Dangling by the neck, the thin body struggled to get out of the noose. SMACK! Three times I heard the sound. The sound of a stick cracking down hard on bones. Three times he struck the head of the squirming little body. Helpless and at the mercy of a strange laughing man, the body hung quiet and motionless but far from death. Suspended by the noose, at the end of the metal rod, the hanging body looks more like a beat-up rag doll. Carrying the limp body by the noose, he crosses the dusty road. The s miling man passes pedestrians and cyclists. He makes his way, unnoticed, to a partially tented area on the side of the road.

The tent is more like a canopy jutting out at a 90 degree angle, eight feet off the ground. Dusty tattered canvas sheets hang from either ends of the canopy creating makeshift walls. Within these confines, positioned in the shape of a "V," are two short r ectangular tables. At the open ends of the "V" shaped tables are two enormous pots of water placed directly across from the other. Located opposite the pots where the tables join, is an equally huge woven basket on the dirt floor.

The resilient body twitches back to life. BANG! Swift, solid impact across the head brings stillness to the barely conscious body. The broken stick has served its purpose and is now mindlessly discarded. The man lifts the rag doll body above one of the pots that contain scalding hot water. Without ceremony, the little body is dipped and stirred ... like a strawberry in melted chocolate. Blood curdling screams of terror and pain are dowsed as the burning water fills-in over the little battered head. Nothing deters the man.

A once powder-white figure is pulled from the tumultuous boiling water, ... charred-black ... and still twitching. Finally resting the tortured body on the ground, the man smiles at this transformation. He rubs a heavy hand across the tiny charred head and around the par-boiled body. Every stroke wipes away parts of the charred exterior. Glassy, transparent, skin stretched over delicate ribs exposes shadowy dark organs. The chest sporadically heaves, as the little body desperately clings to life. S atisfied, that he had run his filthy hands over every part of the slick helplessness, he again heaves the body back into the air. Still dangling by the end of the noose, the little glistening body spasms and convulse. The smiling man swings the body over the other enormous pot that is filled with cold water. Her drops the body and watches it first sink, then rise to the surface. Still gasping ... lungs fill with liquid ... one last convulsion ... It lay floating, for a few quiet moments, before being slun g on top a lifeless pile of bodies contained by the huge woven basket on the dirt floor.

Another man, wearing a dirty, oily bandanna retrieves the body from the woven basket. He takes it around one of the canvas walls to a bloody chopping board and old cleaver. The first strike lands with a "thud." The next strike let out a bone crushing "cru nch!" It took a third and fourth strike of the old cleaver before its dill blade separated the skull from the body. The crowd looked on anxiously. Like Pavlov's dog, the crowd anticipated the coming reward. The smell of boiled flesh and sounds of crushing bones, triggered their warm lubricating saliva to coat their mouths. They were hungrily waiting for lunch.

Across the sunlight dirt road a woman laughs pleasantly. Her lively child points to a fluffy, plump cat in a bamboo cage. The smiling man assists the two by lasso-ing their choice and extracting it from the bamboo cage. Dangling by the neck, in the noose, on the end of a metal rod, we see the cycle start again.