From Monitor Online
On the trail of a long-horned insect
Posted in: News
By
Dec 5, 2009 - 1:36:25 AM
Nearly every Ugandan takes the arrival of nsenene for granted. But the hunt for them is an act of survival that mirrors the story of life and death, as Saturday Monitor’s Rodney Muhumuza reports
If the wall had not been too high, or if the frantic girl in a school uniform had been tall enough, this would have been a quick catch. As fast as the hungry crows hovering in mid-air, as if marking their territory, Julie Nabbosa would have moved to her next target.
Yet height was not the only thing the girl did not have on her side. In this verdant tract of land that overlooks a railway line, where destitute people grow corn and the grass is tall enough to hide the face of a six-year-old girl, Nabbosa could have done with a lot of favours.
There were other boys and girls offering competition, and an adventurous incursion into bushes could leave her bruised. A foray into railway-line territory could be as disastrous as a foolish attempt to climb a rough wall with bare hands. At the very least, these children were bound to suffer terrible itches from hours spent romancing the grass.
Clutching bottles, some nearly full with the objects of their passion, Nabbosa and her horde could not have been fully aware of the risks they were taking. If they were --- and the oldest among them looked to be in his early teens --- they probably did not care.
It was 10a.m. on a rainy morning in an industrial part of Kampala, in the Namuwongo suburb, and these children were here for business. If the bottles they carried showed intent, and if the anxiety on their faces betrayed urgency, each of these children was a veritable soldier.
After all, this was November, season of the grasshoppers, or musenene, when young and old are not embarrassed to chase after tiny insects, when market vendors have to update their stock with a hot addition; when so many Ugandans have to pay expensively to get a taste of the new season.
The insects, known to everyone as simply nsenene, are a type of bush cricket that comes in hues ranging from light green to dark brown and to an improbable purple. In street talk, nsenene (the species Ruspolia baileyi) are said to “migrate” from the central region, in Masaka, to different parts of Uganda --- in gardens, on street poles, on high walls, and in the kinds of bushes Nabbosa was not afraid to negotiate.
“I will go home and fry them,” the girl said, her face contorted with coyness after a stranger asked to know why she was not at school.
“I am going home now.”
The man, looking down at her from his second-storey office, was within reach of several of the insects Nabbosa would have wanted stuffed in her bottle.
The insects were scattered across the wall Nabbosa was not tall or acrobatic enough to scale, and as she and her competitors walked away from the inquisitor, perhaps cursing their fortune, it was now up to the roaming birds to reign supreme. Those who catch nsenene range from innocent children like Nabbosa (who seize them one at a time from beneath dense vegetation) to ruthless businessmen (who invest heavily in harvesting material) and to marabou storks (which ambush the insects in space).
It is a process that renders itself to survival, to recklessness, and, increasingly, to shrewd trade.
Lights on
Not far from the place where Nabbosa was found catching nsenene, across a street that policemen regularly patrol for signs of illegality, one man had recently erected what a looked like an unfinished fence.
The contraption was in fact a trap to catch nsenene --- a barricade made of iron sheets raised high to reach a gleaming bulb. Nsenene are drawn to light, finding refuge along or near bright spots, and businessmen exploit this weakness to catch them in amazingly large numbers. Attracted to the light, which blinds them, the dazed insects inevitably slide down the iron sheets and into open barrels.
If their journey ends in those containers, their story does not. Nearly everywhere in Kampala’s suburbs, from Kitintale to Kamwokya, a keen eye will notice that sometime in November, as torrential rains pound the city, many roadside stalls are crowded with women circling saucepans brimming with nsenene. Their job is to pluck the wings and legs off these crickets, a task not as exciting as catching them, and then dropping them in empty saucepans, ready to be boiled and roasted until they turn a seductive golden brown.
Until the tasters find them crunchy (and salty) enough, the heat may not be turned off. And Johnson Tumuhereze’s job as a vendor may not start.
Never give up
“I walk wherever I can because my job is to sell,” he said one afternoon as he walked along a dusty street, his right hand carrying a can of ready-to-eat nsenene above his shoulder.
“This is my business.” At Shs200, which could be costly for many people, a spoonful is not enough to satiate a craving, and Mr Tumuhereze does not except to make more than Shs5,000 each day. In any case, he is one of so many young men hawking nsenene.
INCOME EARNER: Whenever the months of April and November set in, the trade in nsenene booms and business people cash in big.
In many ways, the nsenene story is as modern as it is archaic, adopting raw capitalism but retaining the crucial role of women in bringing the delicacy into living rooms.
Kiganda oral tradition has it that, in days past, women were sent to shrubs to harvest nsenene but were not allowed to eat them.
As the story goes, the privilege belonged to their selfish husbands.
“I think that the men were just being greedy,” says Charles Peter Mayiga, Buganda Kingdom’s information minister, “considering how delicious nsenene are.”
But the more serious reason, Mr Mayiga said, had to do with “the purity that was attached to the woman” in Buganda. If the women were strong enough to resist eating delicious insects on the sly, it was proof of their fidelity, he said, noting that attitudes have evolved over the years.
“My wife is a modern woman,” Mr Mayiga said, making the point that they both eat nsenene at home.
Put differently, nsenene have become an equaliser. And one place makes it clear: Nearly every morning when it is nsenene season, trucks and motorcycles descend upon Nakasero Market, in Kampala, to deliver huge consignments of freshly-trapped insects ferried from hundreds of miles away.
The jostling for space and sneering among rival salesmen --- young and old, women and men --- sometimes gives way to cold-blooded fights.
They do it for the love of nsenene, so that they milk the new season for all its worth, and so that Madinah Naggayi may take the season for granted.
“I’ve eaten a lot [of nsenene] this season,” the shopkeeper said recently. “I can’t count them, of course. And we don’t care about the trouble they go through to catch them. For us, we just wait.”
What is Nsenene?
Nsenene is the Luganda name for a long-horned grasshopper that is a central Ugandan delicacy as well as an important source of income.
The insect is also eaten in neighbouring areas of Kenya and Tanzania. Traditionally in Uganda, nsenene were collected by children and women. They were given to the women’s husbands in return for a new gomasi (a traditional dress for women). Although the women were made to do the treacherous work of collecting nsenene, they were never allowed to eat them.
It was believed that women who consume nsenene would bear children with deformed heads like those of a conocephaline bush cricket.
Nowadays, nsenene are consumed by most women in the areas where this insect is traditionally eaten.
November is the main nsenene season, the other being April, when a swarm of the delicious locusts converges on the areas around Lake Victoria from the greater North.
The commercial nsenene production includes wholesale trade in sacks, transported over long distances to urban areas in order to get the best price. In most market places, vendors cash in big on the nsenene.
Source: wikipedia
© Copyright 2009 by Monitor Online
