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5 days straight in ssembabule and all i ate was a rotating menu of matooke, posho, beans and cabbage. sometimes there was meat and once there were potatoes. matooke is boiled green plantains, posho is the same as ugali and is a hardened maize flour mixture. matooke and posho are so common in the standard ugandan diet that together they’re known as “food.” i like matooke, i like posho, i like potatoes, but by week’s end my stomach was begging for something not so starchy, not so carbohydrate-y.
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lucky for me the menu was broken up with something fresh. ants. yep, ants. big old fatties at that. in luganda they’re enswa; in english they’re white ants. the “white” comes from the color of their wings, which get pulled off before they’re fried. they’re abundant during the rainy season coming out after it rains and being attracted to light. the CHW trainees wanted me to shine my car’s headlights on the anthill to entice more to come out, but they were able to catch aplenty without my help. hundreds and hundreds of them that they ate plain as a snack and used as a garnish atop their matooke and posho.

i’ve never been a shy eater, so to the delight of my new friends i gave the ants a go. i scooped up a handful and tossed ‘em back. laughter, cheers, and shouts of “mugole is eating enswa!” ensued. (mugole, pronounced moo-go-lay, is my luganda name. it means bride.) my simple act of ant-eating helped me fit in more than i expected and the next night the women invited me to join them on their trip to the market.

if you’re wondering, the goodness of fried food doesn’t exlude ants. enswa is actually pretty tasty, if you can get over the crunchy sensation of eating ants that is.