Afternoon Snack: Mopane Worms

Surely one of the Top 10 Required Activities when visiting a foreign country is to sample the weirdest food possible. While in India I ate zillions of mysterious street foods; while in Kenya I ate a live winged termite (alate); while in Botswana I have eaten many different game meats and various organs; and now I have added to my repertoire possibly the most frightening treat of all: the mopane worm.


I think I posted pictures of the live mopane worm in a previous blog, but here they are again: big and juicy, and not-so-edible-looking. Mopane "worms" are actually the caterpillar form of the mopane moth.

Mopane worms are nutritious and "delicious," much valued by everyone in Botswana as a convenient snack and good source of protein. Women and children gather them off of trees (usually mopane trees, but the caterpillars can live on other trees as well) and dry them for later consumption. Before drying, the picker will squeeze out the leafy green guts (gross!), leaving just the empty worm with its spiny exterior and tasty yellow interior meat.

Today, J brought in a bowl of dried mopane worms. She'd brought the worms all the way from Gweta, her home village, where she had spent the weekend. A couple of weeks ago, I had seen some mopane worms and confessed to J that I'd never tried them before, which she thought was ridiculous... So she brought a big bowl of them for me.

Mopane worms are not difficult to procure; you can buy them from countless ladies who sit at the side of the road with a big sack full of worms, ready to dispense them as though they were any other roadside snack. However, I've never been brave enough to try them before. I mean, eating caterpillars? This is some serious Fear Factor shit, guys. But J was adamant.

"They are very tasty! You have to try them!"

Really? Let's get a closer look at the dried mopane worm:

Mmmmm. Wormy. But I was committed. And these aren't some weird tribal ceremonial specialty - this is a common and coveted snack item all over Botswana! Nay, all over Southern Africa! Bringing mopane worms to a party is like bringing a tray of totally awesome nachos. People love 'em. So I went for it.

Aaah! I decided the best way was to just throw the whole thing in my mouth and chew. It tasted a little like dried fish or seaweed, except milder. The texture was like eating... hmm, I don't know, dried wood? Soft, slightly crispy dried wood? It wasn't difficult to chew, and the exterior was sort of crunchy, but the interior was dry yet solid. Basically a fairly tasteless, slightly salty, weird-textured snack. The grossest part was simply knowing that it was a caterpillar. I ate two, and the rest of the office hoovered up the rest of the bowl in no time flat.

If anyone would like to place an order for mopane worms, please email me or comment below! I'm not sure if it's legal to ship dried caterpillars, but probably customs will never notice...

*CBNRM = Community-Based Natural Resouce Management, the policy which guides the activities of the Huiku Trust.