My name is Padraig Otuma and for a year I worked as a school chaplain and during that year

three times, because I wrote it down each time so I remember it, three times young people spoke to me

about an experience where they'd felt respected from one of their classmates or somebody at home or somebody in the

school. And I don't know why there was something about when an 11-year-old or a 12-year-old told me

that they'd felt respected, that it really struck me, because I wondered, what's the quality

of encounter needed for a young person to feel and to know that they're respected?

And none of these young people were speaking about a sense of entitlement that, you know, I demand to be respected.

There was a deep sense of quietude in them that gave them pause to reflect on what they wanted as a result of being respected.

I've never forgotten that, and it to julietas to chitterlings.

I've dipped my hands in oily paper bags of deep-fried gizzards and chicken hearts. I've swallowed

raw clams and oysters. I've eaten a stack of

jellyfish, cubes of crocodile. I've eaten pigeon and sparrow. I've eaten bad chicken. I've swallowed

the shiny, salty, slimy, pink and pitch caviar out of tiny Russian tins. I've eaten goat,

bullballs and ox and catfish, swordfish, monkfish and salmon. I've eaten prawns and scooped

blood stew and I have eaten red meat shredded, cubed, ground, boiled, fried, broiled, tough, tender, young and old,

pounded, breaded or wrapped in dough, in filo, in tortilla, nestled in the mashed potato,

platano, cornmeal or corn husk, tongue in marinade, brain burger patty and

barbecued intestines. I grew up with blood on my bread, El Hugito, the cow's little juice

reserved for the growing child. The scent of the steak on the skillet drew me to my mother when hungry.

Periodically I turn. I refuse to take in flesh. A meal, a day, or even years I go without.

When I first felt the rejection in my nine-year-old body, my mother bought me a shirt to honour my conscience,

pink with happy farm animals drawn in blue.

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