Unique Eats

Unique Eats

It’s been a while since I wrote anything food related but now it turns out food is all too mysterious. The other day it rained fish in a certain place. Another time, a young woman landed, rather unattractively, in a hot boiler of beans. She got a few burns and that story doesn’t end well. Let’s not talk beans and fish though, let’s talk unique eats and the unique peoples that make them happen.

A long time ago, when I was much younger and less cultured, I’d look through small spaces and peep at people. I had a friend, Grace. Well, to be honest, we weren’t exactly friends but Grace let me peep at her go about without much resistance. She was a tough girl, and although I knew she’d have let me watch her make her snacks from a dignified distance, I was happier peeping through the rails. Grace was tough. Earlier on at the beginning of that term, I had unwisely questioned Grace about her snacks. Her reply was a condescending glare before adding, in clipped tones, that she did not absorb such ignorant questions. I stopped asking and the genesis of my peeping was crafted.

It has started raining again and today I remembered Grace’s strange way with grasshoppers, ensenene. In senior two, it wasn’t as appalling as it seems this 2015 day. We used to gather grasshoppers at the security lights around our dormitory. Grace, with all the skill in the world, would emerge with the biggest prize on any given day. It had occurred to me that grasshoppers, unlike white ants, cannot be eaten raw. I’d often speculate on how Grace consumed her ‘raw’ grasshoppers in magic time but then one Saturday afternoon I accidentally walked in on her as she performed her ‘magic’. Magic indeed, I refuse to take those words back.

Grace would carefully place her grasshoppers between two sheets of paper and with a little salt and blue band, iron them to readiness. To improvise for a lack of kitchen and proper equipment, the unique mind of 15 year old Grace had found a unique way out in those tough times. She’d open up the upper leaf and check on her meal every now and then. And when certain of its edibility, Grace would fetch two slices of bread; place the ready insects between them like the perfect sandwich and iron just a while longer. Looking at the grasshoppers shoved in my face every day by hapless vendors, one wouldn’t tell the difference. I can even bet Grace’s ironed grasshoppers taste much better.

A classmate of mine was excited with the knowledge that people eat common house rodents and yesterday we were arguing about the trachea barbecue that is a normal delicacy in Katanga. Both times I’ve smiled knowingly and thought not yet, nothing beats Grace yet. 
But seriously, why in the world do the people of Katanga grill cow trachea for food?! It’s not hunger; please do not say its hunger.

grilled trachea that i picked up online, i assume you can understand my reluctance at flashing my camera in katanga