“LOCUSTS”

November is usually the locust season in Uganda. If you are not a local you are probably thinking of total annihilation of crops. No. On the contrary, rather, if you are Ugandan, your taste buds must be a hundred times wetter and more sensitive the entire of that aforementioned month.

Uganda is one of those African countries where wonders will never cease. It deserves its “pearl of Africa” tag a hundred and one times. The month of November is known in the local language of Luganda as musenene meaning literally – the month of locusts. And this applies to the rest of the months which are named according to what is peculiar to each.

From November the up to Christmas time, the locals – people, birds, all insect-eating animals – have a constant supply of meat, if that is the right term for locust meat. These locusts are none of your big black and brown locusts with sharp “thorns” on their hind legs. The locust in question is smaller and some even call it the grasshopper. These are green in colour all over except that they have black eyes and when cooked, the only discrepancy is that albeit being green, even after cooking, their eyes, which might not be visible before cooking, tend to bulge out and watch you eat. By the way you do not gut them, you eat them whole, intestines and all.

The locals are very innovative and have some crude but smart ways of catching them, or rather trapping them. They, like moths, are attracted to light and the brighter the better. They put up poles with very bright lights on them, so bright that the welders might need double goggles, and slanting brand new iron sheets which slant all the way to the ground where they drop any content inside a two-hundred-litre drum. The lights are directed to the iron sheets so that the new iron sheets reflect the light on the sheets attracting the moths to that area. At the centre of our venue some start a fire that gives out more smoke than light or heat. This acts as an anaesthetic or marijuana to a marijuana smoker. The locusts, being so naïve as to why the light is so bright there come and start playing on the iron sheets. Eventually they drop from exhaustion and slide into the drums. Those who use the smoke do it to catch faster. So the locusts get dizzy from the smoke and drop into the drums as high as locusts get.

The only other thing is to take your harvest to the market as fast as possible for they are highly perishable, and of course leave enough for your family, you know, for charity begins at home. So if you are a foreigner and you happen to spot a man, or a boy, with some insects in a container, you might want to taste that and redefine an insect.

Copyright, 2011 kimannpaul@yahoo.com