Nummers!

Jordan here: Today I tried lizard with spicy pepper. With a giggle, the men who were serving it in chunks of the animal with skin, scales, claws, and head still intact, they described it to me as nuah ahnee, which translates to crocodiles younger brother. The meat was actually pretty decent, thinking to myself the proverbial “it tastes like chicken”. But I just ate the meat. People here eat everything including the vertebrae and head. They left the jaw bones and teeth, and claws. I asked them if they went hunting for it. They said no they just killed it with a stick. I asked where. They said it just ran across the way over there, pointing about 100 feet behind me. I’m in Africa, I thought. A related story from Sarah. She went to school and was walking from her class just before break and her counterpart yelled from across the way, “Sarah, look!” From his hand he was holding a giant rat. Here we call them grass cutter and they’re actually a bit of a delicacy, hard to believe. She asked what will you do with it, and almost with a skuff, he replied “we’re going to eat it.” So they grilled up the animal, after cleaning it, and Sarah tried a small bite. Not her favorite and probably won’t try again, but was one of those things you can’t say “well I could have tried it, but was scared”. Good for her.

As I was painting the wall for the art spot on our compound, I found a hole in the cement plaster, revealing the orange clay brick underneath. I looked a little closer and saw 8-10 large ants. Well I knew I could paint over them so I tapped the wall near them with the back of my brush. Now provoked, I had woken the whole colony holed up in the wall and sent out a red alert. In seconds, hundreds of large ants were pouring out of the wall. (keep in mind this is not the wall on our house where we live so they’re not pouring out into our domicile) I run to grab my insecticide spray and use up the last bits. It was not enough, the ants kept coming. So I did the noble thing and sat in my screened in porch and watched as, within minutes, the lizards from all directions came scrambling in and made small work of all the ants. Gluttoned and happy, they waddled away and I thanked them for their appetite.