inBUSINESS Issue 12

FOOD
IT CAN’T BE WORSE THAN
SCRUMMY PHANE!
The erstwhile mainstay of the economy of many households in the North East
still commands the palate across a good share of the SADC population, writes
MBAKI TJIYAPO
As the adage goes, ‘One
man’s meat is another
man’s poison.’ While
this is hardly true in the
literalist sense because
except for superficial
appearances like colour and shape of
nose, the basic biology and genome of
humans is the same the world over. Yet
we do eat strange things relative to others
by geography and other factors, including
worms and bugs.
For instance, it comes as a surprise,
even astonishment, to most us in
landlocked Botswana to hear that
some people eat snails and mussels.
Cockroaches, which are omnipresent
as unwanted guests in much of the
world, are just unspeakable as a food to
us. But in Southeast Asia, the Thai are
fond of their fried crickets, worms and
grasshoppers, which makes them not so
completely strange because many among
us are not averse to this range of grub.
Just over 2 000 km to the north of
Thailand, the Chinese enjoy roasted bee
larvae, fried silkworm and dog meat.
Much the same goes for the high-tech
South Koreans and their Communist
neighbours in North Korea. Because
of this, several people around Paje
were unhappy when Snowy Mountains
finally overcame the irksome problem
of collapsible sand and completed the
Serowe-Orapa Road because with the
Koreans going home, their dog breeding
businesses would collapse overnight. As
for me, I have thrown up at the sight of
people munching on live earthworms and
scorpions on Survivor International.
But a few days later, my mother
would leave me hanging out to dry with
a simple question: “How could you be
surprised by people eating worms when
you like your mashonja and nyeza?, she
reprimanded. In my defence, I brought
forth the nutritional value of mashonja
and the various ways in which the
worms may be cooked to suit any meal.
In addition to mashonja, growing up we
ate lots and lots of bugs like the nyeza
or senyetse while some ate ntlhwa and
dikokobele. Only decades ago, BaNgwato
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www.inbusiness.co.bw | Issue 12 | 2017