Dinner?

I don’t consider myself to be a picky eater at home. There are very few things I will not eat. Well, in Nigeria I am a very picky eater. I actually feel really bad about it. I wish I loved everything, but I just don’t. I’ve tried a lot of new things and some I have really come to like and others I never will. Dried fish is commonly eaten here. It is often put in soups and other dishes and I just can’t handle the fishy taste or all the bones. People also eat a lot of carbohydrates like rice and something they call swallow, and I am more of a vegetable eater. I am adjusting to the change, but will be happy to have a nice big salad when I get home.

It is now rainy season, which I love. Most of the nights are cool and windy. I can actually sleep with a sheet covering me! The days can still be pretty hot, but not unbearable. With the rain comes new insects. The last few night I have noticed these large flying creatures that gravitate to light. They have huge wings and are very loud. The first night they got through the holes in the screens on my windows and were loudly flying around my room. I quickly learned that it was better to just be in the dark, so I turned my lights out and the creatures stay away.  In the morning there are wings of these insects everywhere. They loose their wings very easily and continue to crawl around.  Yesterday, I saw a large bowl of these insects on the kitchen counter.  I asked the sister cooking this week if we were going to eat the bugs. She did not respond.  That night for dinner we ate the bugs. They are known as termites, nothing like the termites we have in the United States. They fry them and then eat them like a snack. In an effort to not seem so picky, I tried one. If you can get past the mentality of eating a bug, they are actually not too bad. They are very crunchy and kind of have a chicken like flavor.  I later found out that it was rude of me to call them bugs. The only insect referred to as a bug is a bed bug, and those would never be in the kitchen.  These creatures are only referred to as termites. Below I have included a picture of the fried termites. Don’t you wish you could try one???