When it rains...

...hundreds of Rwandans flood the streets on the hunt for isenene-- cicadas, large grasshoppers, whatever you would like to call them. Apparantly, the heavy downpours of this past week (or perhaps that was just a coincidence with some kind of mating season?) have brought out literally thousands of our crunchy, flying green friends. And what better way to cope with the plague-like infestation than to hit the streets armed with illegal plastic bags, shake out the trees, and catch the little buggers. And then? Bring them to market to sell, of course!

I'm not sure who exactly will be buying and eating all of said cicadas, because as far as I can tell, most Rwandans don't actually eat them. Everyone I have asked has looked slightly taken aback, as if I had just asked them to cook a meal without a gallon of oil and at least 3 starches (an idea which definitely causes a stir). Then they reply that its the Congolese who love eating cicadas. I might be mistaken, but there are not enough Congolese in this region to eat the thousands of cicadas I have seen collected and brought to market. So, either they are merely catching them for sport (Why wouldn't you want to chase cicadas around all day and satisfactorily stuff them in sacks, or squish them as the children do...?) OR they secretly do like eating them, and are just using the Congolese as a convenient cover-up. It's hard to say, but my suspicions lie more strongly in one direction. To back up this opinion, we were served fried cicadas with dinner the other night. They tasted more like crunchy oil and salt than anything else, but not too bad...

Two nights after the cicadas rolled into town, round two of the Biblical plagues struck. I'm not sure where they came from, (the torrential rain? always a good guess) but a sudden storm of gnat-like bugs have certainly rivaled the cicadas in numbers and square inch coverage of walls, floors, and ceilings. I turned on the light in our bathroom the other night and within 15 seconds a black swarm hurled through the window and made quite a resounding chorus of thuds as they hit the walls (and my face) and settled in for the night. Needless to say, my mosquito net has been serving as a particularly safe haven during the past few days. So, what's next? Maybe the frogs? Or boils? Hail seems unlikely here, but at this rate, who knows...:-P