The yard of sausage and wheel of cheese I'd taken to Rwanda to cover the genocide were long gone. Tutsi guerrilla fighters would not let me catch so much as a feral chicken in a countryside swarming with the livestock of their murdered fellow tribesmen. After three weeks I was literally starving. Two cups of tea made with water so flavoured with corpses we called it Eau de Cadavre and a bowl of rice tasting of paraffin was all I got from the soldiers. The lesson here is that you eat what soldiers eat. In Liberia that can mean one's fellow man. So, be prepared: Tabasco sauce and Pot Noodles are essentials. The alternative is rice soaked in sheep fat in Afghanistan; python with slimy wet skin in the Congo; goat's liver in a bun in Somalia.

But it's not all bad. In the Middle East a destitute Arab family might feed us their last meal, and we'll get fat on cinnamon-scented masgouf fish, raisined rice, and lamb boiled in milk. Weight piled on in Iraq and Palestine will quickly fall off with a dose of runny tummy in Freetown, Kinshasa or Kashmir.

Sex or food?

I would curl up and die without both.

· Sam Kiley is a veteran correspondent, reporting from the Middle East and Africa for Channel 4's 'Dispatches'