Culinary delights

I was taking a coaster (read: smaller than a regular bus, bigger than a minibus) to Jinja. When you stop at certain points, people in uniforms trying to sell snacks and drinks surround the bus. This includes water, fruit, and the omnipresent meat-on-a-stick. If you are foreign you can expect the snack-mongers to be particularly pressing. On this day, a gentleman was trying to sell me some meat-on-a-stick. We went back and forth, him telling me to buy meat, me politely shaking my head and saying “no, thank you.” Eventually he could take it no longer, and thrust the meat-on-a-stick through the window, waving it about 2 inches from my face, yelling “MUZUNGU! YOU EAT GOAT”

Needless to say, his tactics did not make me feel inclined to taste his wares.

I have since tried goat-on-a-stick, and while it wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t something I’d care to repeat.

Speaking of tasty treats, it is grasshopper season. The grasshoppers here are big and bright green. When de-winged and de-legged and fried in a bit of oil, they are considered a great delicacy. At night people catch them in this huge corrugated metal traps. The grasshoppers fly towards the bright lights surrounding the traps and fall in somehow. You’ll note that while power cuts are happening all over the city at any given time, the grasshopper lights shine on the whole night through.

I tried a single grasshopper. It was actually quite tasty, with a flavour evocative of some sort of legume. But the yummy taste wasn’t quite enough for me to get over the fact that I was picking antennae out of my teeth, so this is another snack that I likely won’t try twice.