“What would be left of
our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?” ~ Emile M. Cioran
“All
insects with wings are unclean, so don’t eat them.” ~ Deuteronomy 14:19 (ERV)
The insects in PNG are amazing. While we were at our
orientation course in 2009, I took countless photographs of all kinds of
fantastical bugs. Moths larger than your
hand, beetles of all shapes, sizes, and colours, enormous gangly spiders (OK, I
know those are not actually insects), creatures that mimic sticks and leaves …
I am ever enthralled by the seemingly endless variety.
Now that we live in the highlands, the species are more
limited, presumably because of the cooler weather. But we still have our share of moths and
beetles, including the infamous rhinoceros beetle. These in particular can be fun companions – knock them over
on their backs and you can remain entertained for hours watching them try to
right themselves. Also, if you grab them
by the “horn” there is not much they can do except wave their little legs about and attempt to scare you off
with their ferocious hissing.
Also a result of the cooler weather at this elevation, the
mozzies are not too much of a problem. I’m
not saying we don’t have mosquitoes – where there is standing water (which is
everywhere here for about 5 months of the year), they shall breed. But, they are not as likely to carry or
spread malaria. It is possible to get
malaria here in the highlands, and people do, but it is rarer. We faithfully took prophylactic regimens
while we lived at the coast, but a few months after arriving at 5500 feet, we
ran out of meds and decided to throw caution to the wind.
So far, so good.
Now, I recognize that this next confession may strip us of
our missionary status, but I suppose I have to be willing to risk it in the
name of honest journalism: we have never been offered any entomological delicacies
at a meal. Before we came to PNG, I
expected that insects would be a plentiful, and therefore popular, part of the
nationals’ diet, but we have not found it to be so. Many Papua New Guineans do eat
insects, but it does not seem to be as common as in some other areas of the
world. I found a possible explanation in
this article:
“Orsak (1993a) laments that New
Guineans, to their economic and nutritional disadvantage, are coming to believe
that eating insects is "bush behavior" and something to be discarded
in their progress toward development.
But it is obvious from the writings of researchers and educators who are
familiar with the country that insects are an important part of the diet of
Papua New Guineans.”
Interesting
theory.
An exception to
this diminishing insect interest is the sago grub. In marshy areas of the country where sago
palms abound, this plentiful, squishy grub is still a very common source of
nutrition. Paul, having been privileged to ingest such a creature,
would surely attest to its “slightly nutty flavor”… if he’d bothered to taste
it. But, I am pretty sure he swallowed
it like a pill.
If only I had
been so wise.
Last March,
just before we went on furlough, the primary campus had its annual book
festival. Theme: “Don’t bug me; I’m
reading” (aka, insects). By way of
incentive for the classes to each meet their reading goals, the principal
promised that if they did just that, he would “eat bugs.”
That’s why I’m
not the principal. Just sayin'.
There is a
certain beetle in this area that the people especially enjoy. In the dry season, they emerge from the
ground and swarm into the trees. To collect
them, the people put a sheet of sorts on the ground and wildly shake one of
these trees, evicting hundreds of the little critters at a time from their
lofty perches.
But, March is
not quite dry season. And the beetles are not yet, well,
beetles. While definitely edible, the
nationals don’t often eat the larvae because they have to dig them up out of
the ground, a painstaking task compared to merely dislodging more mature (and
crunchy) insects from their elevated colonies.
But, because book festival takes place in March, what choice did we have,
really? Our school custodian graciously
agreed to unearth some of these creatures and prepare them for the big
event.
Boiled and fried, they were certainly well
cooked, and Phil popped one in his mouth and swallowed like a pro. Then he ate a couple more for good measure.
Can’t be that bad, I thought from the sidelines.
Then the chanting
started. Nevermind that I am a woman with delicate
sensibilities, the students began asking for me to eat some, too. And, looking back, wasn’t it nice of Dimeko
to prepare not two or three, but a dozen or so of the creatures? In the moment that the chorus began, it
crossed my mind that by eating “a bug,” by engaging in “bush behavior,” I would
somehow be inaugurated deeper into the missionary club; that surely our partners
back home would be more impressed and touched by my global experiences if said
experiences included ingesting something more exotic than fresh pineapple.
Considering I already had a clothespin on my nose as part of my Junie B. Jones (and the Stinky Smelly Bus) costume, and the fact that they had met their goal, how could I not do this for
them? Besides, the kids
were just so darn cute.
The problem was,
I tried to chew.
As fun as that experience
was, my more typical daily insect exposure involves those who frequent my home:
sugar ants (who aren’t picky and like many different varieties of food),
roaches (yes, American cockroaches,
which I assume came over 20 or 30 years ago in someone’s sea freight shipment),
and fruit flies (which I learned in high school science do not actually emerge from rotting
fruit, but which regularly give me cause to second-guess that conclusion.)
Now, I am certain
you are slack-jawed in awe of the exotic life I am leading here.
Perhaps
familiarity truly does breed contempt, because I detest them all. The ants are just a nuisance, appearing in
droves almost as soon as something capsizes onto the counter. My favourite method to eliminate these is to
systematically snuff out their little lives with my fingertips.
Die, die, die, die, die … die, die, die …
Maybe it is the
sugar, but they tend to stick, and it is not unusual to have seven or eight, or
twenty-two, smooshed little guys on each finger by the time I am done.
As for the
roaches, I get all creeped out if I so much as hear them crunch, especially if
I have to do it myself. I am not afraid
of much, and I suppose I am not truly “afraid” of cockroaches, but when I do
see them (which is rare, since Paul made a batch of homemade “roach balls” and
placed them strategically around the house), I much prefer to call out to my
dear husband with a quivering “Paaauuuullll …. Will you please come be my hero?!” With a grunt and a roll of the eyes, he
appeases me. Usually.
Fruit flies may not emerge from rotting fruit, but come to
find out they don’t actually even need
rotting fruit. I never knew that. No, all they need is ripe fruit.
Let me just say that I keep no fruit, ripe, rotting, or otherwise, in our bathroom. So, why I had a fruit fly zipping around
while I was curling my hair this morning, I may never know.
I discovered something about fruit flies, though, that I
never knew, or frankly cared about.
Fruit flies bleed when you smoosh ‘em.
My friend said, “are you sure it wasn’t some kind of fruit
juice or something?”
Um … this was in the
bathroom, remember?
The blood gave me cause to stop and consider … God created
these pesky little flies (and ants, and cockroaches too, but we’ll have to have
a chat about that when I see him next) … not just with wings and legs and fermentation-sniffers,
but with respiratory systems and circulatory systems and excretory systems. (Yes, all that fruit alcohol has to go
somewhere.) I am amazed to find intricate
diagrams of fruit fly internal anatomy on the internet, meaning that someone
somewhere (likely with university tenure and tens of thousands of dollars in
grant funding) has done detailed research on these critters who at about 3mm
long only live about two weeks.
I wonder how much time God put into creating the fruit fly? Only for me to smoosh his teeny weeny brains
out.
Not trying to be sacrilegious here, but it kind of made me wonder
if part of Job 38 might have been edited out …
“Where were you when I
gave flight to the Drosophila? Who
assigned 28 degrees Celsius as its optimum growing temperature? Can you number the hundreds of embryos each
female deposits in your aging fruit bowl?
Who wrote the male’s courtship song on his wings? Tell me if you understand.”
I don’t. I certainly don’t.
But after watching that poor fly bleed on my counter, I think
God should have left that passage in there.
That would have given me something to chew on.
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