grasshoppers, delicious and lucrative food

At each major crossroads in the capital, vendors offer locusts to passers-by, who tear them away. In baskets, on the ground or even directly in pots, these insects are in no way repulsive. “It tastes a bit like meat, or chicken”, explains a passerby. Most of these little treats come from Masaka in central Uganda. Some men are locust hunters. Every day, they install a few aligned barrels, with corrugated jail plates on top, a trap cleverly set up. “We have to install it every day and take it apart every morning. That’s how we get what it contains”, explains Ibrahim Katongole, a grasshopper hunter.

When night falls, all that’s left is to turn on supercharged bulbs that spit out their blinding light and reflect on the jail. This light trap attracts all the grasshoppers around. “Those which pass in the sky fall against the plates of jail, and slip into the barrel. We wait until the early hours to recover as much as possible”, he specifies. Once sold in the market at a fluctuating price, they are prepared by hundreds of little hands who remove the wings, legs, and tail.