I know that I complained in a recent blog entry about soumbala and gumbo. But there’s foods far more exotic than that in West Africa.
By "exotic" foods, I mean foods that back home in Nebraska we'd describe as 'different'.
'Different' is a way to say 'really, really bad' in Midwestern Understated Dialect. If you invite a Nebraskan to see a politically-inspired modern dance piece featuring nude performers, scrap metal and chunks of raw meat, chances are he or she would say afterwards : "Thanks. That was different." We are a polite, cautious people.


So, being Nebraska born and raised, I'd have to say that caterpillars are different.


Now, I like caterpillars when they are A) humorous sidekick caterpillars, as featured in popular animated films, such as Bug’s Life. Or B) colourful creatures that stay outdoors, not making personal contact with me and eventually turning into butterflies.

I do NOT like caterpillars when they are C) dried, toasted and presented to me as my lunch.


Bobo-Dioulasso, the second largest city in Burkina, is famous for its edible caterpillars. It’s not a culinary oddity that the thrill-seeker has to laboriously ferret out. People present the things proudly at the town’s main market: bag after bag of the chubby brown bodies.
They are commonly eaten in sauces, but also in salads. And instead of a boring old mushroom omelette, in Burkina you can have yours with caterpillars.

I’ve posted a picture above from a cookbook called “Culinary Arts of Burkina Faso” (It’s published by the national tourisme office here). The book features several typical Burkinabé foods: tô, degue, zoom-koom, dolo, etc. and right in there among them are recipes for salad and omelettes featuring sitmus caterpillars.


Roasted grasshoppers are another somewhat alarming specialty. My friend Delphine loves them and nothing makes her happier than when a friend from Niger sends her a bag full of the crunchy treats. When she urged me to try some, I gingerly picked past the whole insects and found a small leg. It was not horrible, but I couldn’t get past the idea.
Eldest daughter (then age 6) is far more adventurous than her mom. She carefully chose a whole insect and popped it in her mouth. She thought it was great and settled down beside Delphine to eat a few more. She reported that the heads were a bit icky, but the bodies were pretty good.
Just like potato chips, but with more protein, I guess.


Folks in Burkina also eat bats. This was a source of a minor misunderstanding when I first arrived in Ouaga. I haven’t tried it – and probably won’t. But you can order stewed bat in some local restaurants.
Agouti (or grasscutter) is also frequently found in restaurants here, even though they live more to the south in places like Ghana.
Monkey meat is sometimes found. It's euphemistically called "bush meat".

Of course, the average person here doesn't eat much meat at all. And when they do, it tends to be either goat or mutton. Neither of these dishes are ever served at our house, though -especially the former.
Aslan the Wonder Goat is our friend, not our food!

Still no internet at home, so I have once again ventured into the city center to post the latest news, which is there is lots of and check emails. Yes, I was finally just now able to get at my messages, but I still can’t send any.

Here’s the lastest:

While Ouaga has escaped any violent protests this week, other towns in Burkina have not been so lucky, as I explained yesterday. Bobo and Ouahiagouya exploded on Wednesday and one death has been reported, along with lots of damage throughout the town. Even today most people there are staying hoem and many businesses are closed- that’s the word from Mahama’s nephew that lives there, anyway.

Yesterday afternoon brought reports that protests and rioting had begun in Banfora. It’s a moderately sized city in the far west of the county. Kind of charming. The sugar industry is based there and it’s also near many tourist attractions, so it’s quite an important place here. I don’t have any specific news yet about how much damage has been done .

Many people here believe that this is not the end of the troubles, by any means. Until the government forces vendors to adhere to the price controls already in place and adds controls on other necessities, protests will spread. Rumors and printed flyers are multiplying. Yes, the protest factions are actually organised, to a degree. Ouagadougou’s protest demonstration is “officially” scheduled for Feb 28. But the rumors are more diffuse- The protest here could be on Monday, Thursday, Friday, or all three, if folks are really enraged.

This in mind, I went to the grocery store to stock up on supplies. I found the center of town choked with soldiers, Russian-made machine guns slung across their backs or carried for more convenient access. Looks like the government wants to discourage any ideas of a protest here in the capital.
I quickly did my shopping and headed over here to the cybercafé to post this. Then I’ll grab the kids at school and get them back to our calm, soldier-free neighbourhood.

With all the unrest around here, I listen to the radio more often. Reports of the rioting of the past two days even made it onto RFI (Radio France International) It's the French national news station- similar to NPR in the USA. Eldest Daughter calls it “RFB” -Radio France Boredom.

I am out of time. And I doubt I’ll be able to post on the weekend. Saturday we are having the twins’ birthday party, so I’ll probably be busy all day.

Life without the internet at home has been good for me, sort of. Often, my morning routine normally consists of: 1.Getting online 2. Reading and answering all e-mail 3. Reading all the headlines on my iGoogle news page. 4. Clicking on and reading all the interesting news, which leads to clicking on other, related interesting news 5. Checking out what’s going on with various other blogs that I like…

I can use up one or two hours (or more!) before I actually get down to the task of writing for this blog. It can be very hard to get online here and when you do, the pages are really slow to load. And then the internet holds so many distractions, especially if you love to read. I was just talking to an American woman yesterday who was proudly proclaiming that she hardly ever uses the internet and has never been in a chat room, played a game, etc… She was amazed at my admission that I love spending time online and I spend it all reading or posting things that I’ve written. Possible slogan: The Internet: It’s Not Just For Socially Inept Teenaged Boys Playing RPGs Anymore.
But for the past few days I haven’t been online much and yesterday I couldn’t get on at all. I haven’t been able to see my emails since Saturday. Liptinfor (my internet provider) is down and I don’t know when it’s going up again. They say they have people “working on it”. I suspect that what they did was send in a team of nice folks to speak to the server in an encouraging tone and build its self-esteem. Which is nice, but not very effective. I mean it’s been five days now!

What I have been doing with my days is spending time at Papiers, running errands, exercising and writing more than usual. Much more. Yesterday alone I wrote five pages. Single spaced. Which is not bad for a woman with four kids, a husband, three goats, a paper project and a life.

This is all good, but I am getting pretty frustrated, as so much is going on in Burkina right now! I’d love to be blogging about it daily and also be publishing the remainder of our Nanou village trip. But the internet thing is such a handicap. I’m posting this from a cybercafé that uses a different server. But it’s really busy here and not very convenient, compared to blogging from home.

But enough of me whining.

Here’s what’s up in Burkina: The “ville mort” strike planned for Wednesday in Ouaga didn’t happen. It was headed off by the government, which announced on Tuesday night that the National Assembly would be addressing the problem of the skyrocketing cost of living in Burkina. They would be discussing measures such as price controls on staples. The public was requested to not hold marches, shut down the city or vandalize property. And in Ouaga, it worked. Wednesday was a day like any other. But in the second-biggest city in Burkina, BoboDioulasso, and in Ouahiagouya, it was a whole different story. In both cases, the day started with marches and banners, but quickly degraded into vandalism and destruction. Smoke from tires burned by the protesters mixed with the tear gas the CRS riot police used copiously throughout the towns. The newspaper L’Observateur Paalga lists the final damage in Bobo as: “traffic lights destroyed, traffic signs torn down, windows broken, vehicles damaged, shops pillaged, gas stations attacked, small vending stands demolished, etc…” I heard on the radio that the rioters/protesters also destroyed two monuments in the city. No was was reported as killed but there were some serious injuries.

The newspaper was quite critical of the actions of the mobs. Here’s a rough translation of one very pointed paragraph: “This movement, that certainly paralysed normal activities yesterday in Bobo, would have been important, if the main point of demonstrations were to have delinquents and bad elements that don’t have anything better to do work off their frustrations in the city streets and demonstrate their lack of public-spiritedness. And tough luck for the Burkinabé taxpayer who will have to pay for all the damage done during the demonstration.”

So, two big cities in Burkina exploded into violence, but Ouaga remained completely calm. Let’s just hope that the trust of the folks in the capital is justified and the government really will try to control spiralling prices. Many basic foods and supplies have risen by up to 60% in the space of only one month! For example, a “plat” (a local measure) of corn that used to cost 250 cfa (about 40 cents US) now costs 400 cfa. The cheapest soap that people here use used to cost 125 cfa, but now the price is up by 40%. And so it goes down the line. And when you remember that the average person here lives on less than one dollar a day, the impact really sinks in.

So, that’s the real news around here. I'm posting this from a cybercafé in town and don't have much time. But I hope to come back tomorrow and post a bit more of the Nanou saga, if nothing more important comes up.