cOOKing tErMitES

Here are few pictures from the brief time I was at site. The rains bring waves of winged termites out at night - they coordinate their leaving from the nest and dispersal to minimize getting eaten by predators (like hatching sea turtles). A couple posts ago I said I was too lazy to catch them and eat them, but I think really it was more nervousness about eating them in large quantities. I can eat one bug - but can I eat a handful of them? Turns out I really like them... like potato chips. Just another lesson taught to me in the Peace Corps experience: how your perception about something can be skewed simply because of your culture. My culture tells me we don't eat bugs (except snails, which I think is 1000x more disgusting). But why not eat bugs (I think there is a recent TED talk with the same title)?

The pictures of the kids are my friend Caetano's family. It's going to be so awesome when they grow up and see themselves in the lineup picture - they are like the little rascals.

There's also my dog, Shumba (or Chumba, as some people have started spelling it, depending on if you want his name to mean "Lion" in Shona or "he fails" in Portuguese) who is much too small for his puppy bed but decided to curl up in it the other day nonetheless.