Trip to Bamenda and Grasshopper Eating

This Saturday was a lot of fun because we got to be tourists!

We (Danny, Emiley, and I) rounded on our patients on Saturday morning and then took off with two of the other US families and one Cameroonian resident to Bamenda (there were 15 of us in total), which is a larger city about 45 minutes away.

Danny, Elle, Tony squeezing into the

car on our way to Bamenda

While there, we met a Canadian who has lived in Cameroon as a missionary for around 20 years, and she took us to several places: first to her house (she sells crafts made by some of the local people), to the grocery store, to a craft shop, and then to the open air market in Bamenda.

The grocery store reminded me of a bodega in my neighborhood... except that they sold a product called "Medicare" which I found very amusing.



Who knew that Medicare was so easy to obtain?



In the grocery store with Tony
(Cameroonian resident) and Rebecca

 The open air market was gigantic. There was a whole section of people selling fabric, another section of people selling meat (including cow stomach which is known as "towel"), and other shops selling spices, soap, produce, and pretty much anything else you could imagine. There was even a guy selling rat poison who was waving around dead rats on a string to demonstrate the effectiveness of his product!

 

Above: scenes from the Bamenda open air market (fabric shops, selling potatoes, me walking through the market, lots of soap, a person carrying a large and probably heavy box on her head, me in the fabric shop)



100 CFA worth of live grasshoppers

On to part two of our Saturday adventure.

It is grasshopper season in Cameroon, and the person who has been cooking for us at the hostle (Margaret) agreed to cook us up some critters if we brought them to her. Not sure if she really thought we'd take her up on it, but we saw a lady with a large bucket of live grasshoppers at the market so we bought 100 CFA (20 cents) worth and brought them home. Take note: it is important to buy live grasshoppers as in previous seasons people were using Raid to mass-kill and then sell their grasshoppers.

 Here is a photo-documentation of our grasshopper meal.

First, wash the grasshoppers in warm water with salt. Here Margaret is showing me how she does this.

Next, boil the grasshoppers in a small amount of water with a bouillon cube. The grasshoppers have a lot of natural oil, so no need to add extra. Just cook for about 10 minutes until all water has evaporated and the grasshoppers turn golden brown and crispy.

It is time to eat the grasshoppers. Some people pull off the wings and legs because they are tougher. Margaret is showed us how to remove the wings and legs.

We pretty much ate them whole. They were quite tasty, I'm sure in large part because Margaret is a great cook. We also had cabbage rolls for dinner that night.

To clear your minds of grasshopper eating, this is a picture of me with an insanely large pineapple.

Hope you enjoyed this photo-diary!

See you soon!

-Karen