Village life here has the same sense of community I’m used to at home in the South Wales Valleys.  People are more important than time and efficiency is achieved from necessity.  Its worship becomes evident as a foreign, social construct.  There’s bliss in observing and learning about people without understanding a single word being spoken.  Gestures, intonations, garments and decorations burst with the ordinarily subconscious symbolism.  Behaviour is familiar and as predictable as at home but this commonality is as pervasive as is the exotic.

Rising at 3am to fill a bucket with squirming caterpillars by torchlight is as novel an experience as any.  Three hours later, bucket full to the brim with meaty caterpillars, local collector Ajita and I laugh together at my brownish, greenish hand, filthy from defensive caterpillar spit.  Ajita’s hand is  spotless.  It seems there’s a knack to the collection method and Ajita’s experience shows.  She brings me water and enacts scooping up the abrasive gravel to show me how to remove the harmless, stubborn stains.  We drink tea and enjoy her homemade cakes before the arduous preparation of the caterpillars begins.  

The caterpillars have to be washed three times before cooking, with specks of leaf and twigs painstakingly pinched away at each step.  We hunch over buckets of black water, surrounded by mounds of caterpillars:  my five kilograms, Ajita’s twelve and Charlotte and Momoni’s sixteen.  The cleaning process takes a further three hours and the sun is now strong enough to burn my skin.  Ajita’s baby, Alimatou, plays happy and curiously with the caterpillars, in between plenty of breaks for breastfeeding.  

Later that afternoon, with all thoughts of the caterpillars temporarily wiped from my mind by a welcome rest, I enter the kitchen to the most glorious smell.  With dozy excitement I wonder what we are having for lunch today and I’m greeted at the stove by a pan full of well-cooked, seasoned and relished caterpillars.  I enjoy them in some bread like a hotdog and relax after a satisfying day.

Caterpillar season has definitely begun here! 

The caterpillars are everywhere, as you can see from this photo:

The caterpillars come down the trees and move to neighbouring trees, searching for more shea leaves to eat. As a result, there are very few shea leaves left on the trees.

Some people are worried that many of the caterpillars wont reach maturity, because there arent enough leaves left. So, even though there seem to be caterpillars wherever you look, the harvest might not be as big as people had hoped. 

But for now, men, women and children alike are waking at 3am every morning to collect caterpillars by torchlight. And Sioned (my new field assistant) and I are joining them.

People only collect caterpillars here in the early hours of the morning, because this is the time when the final instars descend to pupate in the soil. This means that during the daytime the caterpillars roam free from predators, but by night they're in high demand. I even spotted a snake enjoying the harvest the other day..

Each morning, we've been measuring the hours we spend collecting, the weight of our harvest, and (when technology permits) the distance we walked. 

So far, between us (me, Sioned, and our neighbours - N=6), on each morning for the last three days we've collected for an average of 2hrs 25min, walked an average of 4.9km and collected an average of 8kg of caterpillars per morning! Our average departure time is 3.38am and our average return time is 5.49am.

8kg of caterpillars looks something like this (there's about 8kg in each of these buckets):

But how much income can be made from 8kg of freshly collected caterpillars? And how many people does that feed? These are questions I'll be able to answer with confidence by the end of the season. Stay tuned, and meanwhile if you have any other questions about all things edible-caterpillar-related, please post them below or send me an email.

PS. If you'd like to know more about exactly what caterpillar collection involves, here's my post from last year collecting caterpillars here in Burkina Faso. And watch this space for a post from Sioned about her first time!

PPS. I'm trying to take video when I can, because it's so much easier to grasp what this is all like if you see a short video clip. I've been posting these on Twitter, @libertyruth - follow me if you're interested!

A three-day journey involving a night bus, two planes, a tuk-tuk, a motorbike, a bicycle and my rucksack that ended up in Paris as opposed to Ouagadougou brought me to the small village of Soumousso in southern Burkina Faso. As we eventually arrived at the final destination, it was clear that we were literally in the middle of nowhere- Soumousso is barely even visible on google maps- and I felt a very long way away from home. 

Other than the obvious differences to the Yorkshire Dales such as the mud huts, lack of electricity and the constant beating down of the sun, the many parallels that I noticed that could be drawn from home made settling into the ways of life in Soumousso seem natural.

The daily activities of community and gossip, rampant livestock stampeding throughout the village and even congregating in the local “pub” seems to sum up rural village life all over the planet.

The traditional nuclear family is challenged by the home set-ups of households in Soumousso. Polygamy is a common occurrence where the men have multiple wives and many subsequent children. These remarkable families live under the same roof quite amicably and function as a unit. There was no escape for me, and I was bombarded with marriage proposals with persuading offers in the form of goat-themed gifts. I decided to settle on becoming the second wife of local farm worker, Poda, whose first wife is due to give birth to their second child any day now. We have been experiencing marital bliss, with Poda keeping me well supplied with eggs and taking me for night-time rides on the back of his motorbike. I regret that I will be leaving a broken home on my return to Yorkshire. 

The most outstanding difference to the UK is the ability of multiple ethnic groups of Burkinabes to cohabit without difficulty. Different tribes, with different languages - indeed there are 74 individual languages spoken across the country- of Muslim, Christian and traditional religions rub shoulders faultlessly within Soumousso. The conflict that has arisen in equivalent situations in the West appears to have been remedied in Soumousso by, in all honesty, pure banter with its subsequent laughter and hilarity. Illustrating this, in my first week I witnessed what was primarily shocking jokes made to a visiting man of a different village based on how his tribe had once been enslaved by people from Soumousso. However the result was everyone falling about laughing. I quickly learnt to take nothing anyone said seriously, and the merriment generated from each and every conversation has profuse and vital lessons for the West within the current precarious atmosphere.
 
Finally, as a tip for any future visitors of Burkina Faso, customs allows you to bring a kilo of dried caterpillars into the UK and they make for very unique gifts...

Back in April/May, I panicked: My friends in Burkina Faso told me that the rains had begun many weeks in advance. I had to leave the UK early - and, I had to find a field assistant who could help me out in June!

After frantically contacting everyone I could think of, I sat back and sighed, the impossibility of this year's data collection looming in my mind.

And that's when I heard from Sally, a second year Geography student at Cambridge, thanks to her Director of Studies, David Rose. 

This is Sally:

See? She loves trees, which is always a good sign. She's also a fantastic fieldworker - adaptable, hardworking, good company - and in the past couple of weeks she's been invaluable - collecting data on the newly emerging caterpillars while i have been out doing bird surveys. 

You'll hear further details from her soon - he's promised to write a post for me (she says it'll be titled something like 'Burkina Faso: Impressions of a Yorkshire lass'), so watch this space. But for now, here's a few photos of Sally at work. She's leaving on Sunday and she'll be much missed!

​Last night was really quite surreal. More than once, the proverb 'be careful what you wish for' came to mind.

I arrived in the village yesterday evening, and was immediately confronted with the tasks of collecting water, reconnecting my solar panel, repairing damage done to gas pipes that had been chewed through by a mouse, and mitigating emerging political situations within the village. Thanks to the help of my neighbours, I wasn't alone in any of this, but by 9.30pm I was exhausted and ready to lay out my mat to sleep.

However, the world had other ideas. 

A large moth with a frantic wingbeat careered by drunkenly, drawn to my reading light, and i glanced down at it. I sat up, put down my book, and switched to autopilot. This was a Cirina butyrospermi moth!

My first reaction was to get my makeshift 'killing jar' (a sealable plastic bag with a wad of acetone-soaked tissue), because we need to collect a few samples for DNA barcoding and identification. However, I quickly corrected myself - some of these moths might not yet have mated, so there's a chance I can collect eggs, let them live out their lifespan, and take them as specimens afterwards.

I got a cage from my bag and began to collect moths to put inside. At first, I used a net. But before long I was grasping them with my hands.

I've just got back from Madagascar! I was there for a meeting of IPSIO (Insects and People of the Southwest Indian Ocean), coordinated by ant expert Brian Fisher, who also runs the Madagascar Biodiversity Center right by Tsimbazaza zoo in Antananarivo.

Madagascar is home to an incredibly diverse range of plants and animals; 90% of all species are found nowhere else on earth. But, as this photo above shows (taken through a plane window!), agricultural expansion is encroaching on wild habitats, putting many unique species in danger of extinction.

During the three day meeting, and three days of field trips, we listened to some inspiring people talk to us about some really exciting projects and prospects for harnessing the potential of insect-human interactions to combat problems of wealth inequality, environmental degradation and malnutrition. Here are some highlights.
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Catherine Craig spoke to us about CPALI(Conservation through Poverty Alleviation, International)'s work in Madagascar. In partnership with a local NGO, they base their strategies on the belief that local communities are crucial for effective conservation. They have set up training centres where they teach local farmers how to rear wild silkworm and plant native silkworm feeding trees. Farmers are offered 'stepping stone' incentives (such as further rearing equipment, further training, and eventually a salary) in return for their participation in the rearing program.

This gives value to the forest, and therefore helps with habitat conservation and reforestation. At the same time, it gives people a source of livelihoods. The enterprise relied mainly on crowdfunding to get going.

CPALI are currently focusing their efforts on repairing the damage wreaked by a major cyclone that hit the northeastern coast of Madagascar. They are seeking donations to the relief effort via their GlobalGiving page.
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Tapia forests are dominated by a single tree species, Uapaca bojeri. The leaves of these trees are the food plant for a native silkworm, Borocera cajani. This photo shows the tapia forest, which covers the ridges that tower above fertile valleys in the region:

We visited a small facility where larvae are hatched and raised year-round, to ensure that even when storms or forest fires threaten the species, they are still available. The photos below show pupae, larvae and moths in the facility. The pupae are also sold in the local markets as food.

Last but not least, Bombyx mori - this is the now-widespread Asian species of silkworm that has been farmed for its silk for thousands of years, and can no longer survive in captivity.

It's unclear how long it's been used in Madagascar (the island was first settled 4000 years ago by migrant agricultural populations from Asia), but it's certainly fairly important today. It was the only insect for sale in the city markets that we visited, and it clearly has great economic importance to the people who cultivate it and make products from it. Here are some photos of people using Bombyx mori in Antananarivo, Madagascar's capital city:

Now, having returned from Madagascar, I'm feeling inspired and uplifted. We were lucky to be joined by some experts with years of experience who had some really great insights and ideas about the future of insects and people in Madagascar. At the end of the meeting, we had a much more concrete plan for how the project will progress in the coming months and years, and I'm excited to be a part of it.

It was also really relevant to my PhD work. Of course, on the practical side, it was invaluable to see first-hand the methods used for rearing different African silkmoths, and hear about some of the logistical problems that had been overcome in developing different rearing practices. But it was also useful in a broader sense: In one very memorable presentation, Alan Gardiner spoke to us about his experience working with mopane worm harvesting communities in southern Africa, and emphasised the importance of community participation. Adding value to the environment is one crucial step of any successful conservation project, he said, and then giving local communities ownership of the project is equally necessary. Without these qualities - value and ownership - the project is unlikely to last beyond a few years.

This gave me a great deal to think about regarding our current project in Burkina Faso. How can we ensure that the communities we work with feel that they have ownership over the work that we do? How can our work add value to biodiversity in the region? I've a few ideas, and now, thanks to my time in Madagascar, I'm lucky to have some great contacts to discuss those ideas with! 

We did it! We managed to raise over and above our target for funding our research project, thanks to 44 generous backers on experiment.com.
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Also, the project was covered in a 30 minute programme on the BBC World Service! They visited us in Burkina and interviewed our Burkinabe collaborators at the University of Ouagadougou, and several of the women in the villages where we work. The programme is called 'Should we eat insects?', it's free to listen to online, & available for the next 21 days!
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Hello, and happy World Water Day!

I guess 'happy' isn't the right word to use here. 

A couple of days ago, I read that Wednesday 22nd March would be World Water Day. And, I read that 663 million people live without a safe water supply close to home; that women and children are those who must carry the burden of collecting water for the household; that a lack of safe water is a major contributor to health problems in the developing world.

Those facts and figures felt familiar to me - Where I live and do fieldwork in Burkina Faso, the water that I and most people living around me rely on comes from unprotected wells, which don't fulfil the WHO's definition of safe water. 

Also in the same villages, drawing water is definitely women's work - I've never seen a man carrying water. Whether it's safe or not, the transport of water is back-breaking, time-consuming, energy-sapping. Wealthier families (and me, I use my bicycle) have bicycles and donkeys to help the women to carry the many litres of water a family needs each day to wash, cook, clean and drink. But many women carry their water - 25-30 litres at a time - on their heads, walking up to 1km between their homestead and the nearest dug well, several times a day, in temperatures of up to 45C.

As I was reading about World Water Day, three memories came to mind. The first is trivial, the second two are not:

1- The memory of time that the nearest well to me was contaminated, and for a week I had to walk twice as far to get water. What was already an arduous and time-consuming task became more so - and I felt guilty and resentful of the privilege that allowed me to be frustrated by this.

2- The memory of a man in the village pointing out that if they only had the money to build a dam, they'd be able to grow so much more. A river flows past the village where I work. In the dry season it's a cracked riverbed, and in the rainy season it's a dangerous and volatile torrent. The surrounding homesteads are water-poor. They can only grow crops during the short rainy season, limiting them to staple crops requiring little water. As soon as he said it I could see it in my mind's eye - a diverse, water-rich vegetable garden, communally-owned and fed by irrigation via a simple dam. I've seen it in other villages nearby. Fertile soil is a sure ticket to a more food- and financially-secure existence, and this can be achieved with a plentiful water supply.

3- The memory of woman in my village who came home one evening feeling unwell. She couldn't walk the 500m to collect water (which they draw from an unprotected well) to prepare food. Her neighbour came round and made her and her husband some maize porridge. She felt better, and went to sleep. The next morning, she was dead, and her husband buried her next to their 9-yr-old son, who had died a few months before, also from unexplained causes. They live 7km from the nearest clinic, along dirt tracks that are inaccessible by car, so an evening visit to the doctor wasn't an option. They'd had a bad harvest, so they were stressed and food insecure. Was it a water-borne disease that killed them? Would better sanitation have protected them against ill-health? A lack of access to safe water is part of a vast suite of interrelated problems that make it near-impossible for households to even see a way out of the struggles of poverty, let alone have the strength to do so.

So back to World Water Day. After my three memories/stories, I've three thoughts:

Firstly: This is NOT just about water. In many parts of the world, a lack of safe water is a symptom of a much greater problem: Wealth inequality. Just look at my stories above. In the first, I'm jolted out of my comfort zone by a situation that could be deadly for some, but for me it's just an inconvenience. Why? Because when I get ill, I have the money to pay for healthcare, for transport to the nearest clinic, for medicine, etc. If it's really bad, I even have money to fly me to the UK for round-the-clock medical care.

Secondly: I think the same is true for food security. It's NOT just about food; it's a term we use to describe another symptom of wealth inequality. This is evident in the second story sbove - food security and water security are both dependent on financial security.

Thirdly: By focusing on the symptoms of food and water insecurity, are we missing the point? Are we failing to diagnose and confront the greater malaise of wealth inequality - and in doing so, failing to acknowledge our role as perpetrators of this system?

I know that this is where I should tell you about a great way to help in the fight against wealth inequality, and towards a more water-secure world. But it's not easy - even the World Water Day official website just has advice on how to spread the word about unsafe water..which is not bad in itself, but I can't help feeling that there is something more that we can, and should, do.

So here are my three ideas for small actions we might want to take today:

1. A bit of wealth redistribution. Water.org offers affordable loans to women to install safe water and sanitation facilities! Every $1 you give has a $4 return. So donating to water.org is one positive action to take today.

2. A bit less water wastage. Get into the habit of doing one or more of these practical steps toward a more water-secure world: Take a shorter shower. Wash your hair less frequently. ​Eat less meat, & swap it for vegetable protein, which uses FAR less water. Or, just cut down on your protein, as most people in developed countries eat too much anyway. Dont leave the tap running when brushing your teeth or washing plates. Turn off the shower when you're applying soap/shampoo. Handwash your clothes when you can.

3. A bit of altruism - if you'd like to do something to help the water-, food- and financially-insecure communities where I work, please consider donating to our crowdfunding campaign here. If you've other ideas for how these communities can be more water-, food- and financially-secure, please contact me directly. And if you're interested in knowing a bit more about the women I work with, here's a recent blog post that gives a bit more information about their lives.

I'm part of a new project! We're exploring how to best enjoy insects and wine together, two of the world's greatest luxuries...

Here is my first blog post on the site, which describes the first five of ten traditional pairings of insects with wine. I chose to start with this because I wanted to emphasize that globally we have a rich history of eating insects alongside fermented alcoholic drinks - so, there's firstly a great historical precedent for the project, and also probably a lot to be learned from traditional pairings. Here are some pictures from that first post:

We also had a launch party last night, which was fantastic. We're hoping to get lots of people involved, contributing to the blog and exchanging recipes, tips and recommendations. Please be in touch if you're interested in being a part of the project!