After a 6hr bus journey and three plane journeys (5.5hrs, 12.5hrs, 1.5hrs), we eventually arrived in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. The summertime rains are coming to a close, and as a result, the landscape is green and fertile.
I was able to take these photos thanks to a Zimbabwean woman sitting next to me on the plane, who offered me her window seat for the landing. She also shared lots of very, very interesting stories with me, about all sorts of things..one of which was her own experience of entomophagy while growing up in Zimbabwe. She mentioned that she remembered collecting Msasa beetles as a child. I duly wrote her description of the beetles in my notebook - they feed on the Msasa trees and are plentiful in December, often called Christmas beetles. After collecting them, the children would remove the legs and wings and fry the body. - and assumed a quick internet search would give me more information. However, I've found conflicting results, and nothing very concrete. Some sites mention that Christmas beetles are cicadas; a Google images search yields photos of a 'blister beetle' in Zambia.. I wonder which (if either) is correct, and if these insects are still collected by children in parts of Zimbabwe. If you are reading this and know more, please send me an email!
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