For the past month I have been dodging locusts divebombing my head in the street and locking my windows at night from fear that a few of these critters may enter my room while I sleep. In my opinion a locust looks similar to a praying mantis, however unlike the latter they appear in mass quanitities. I was ignorant of the fact that swarm of these things attack deserts and their crops...Al Jazeera has been dedicating a special segment on their destructive path in Yemen.
After being attacked in my kitchen the other night from the supposedly harmless creature, my roommate and I decided we were living in some type of Biblical myth. I remember in my Catholic upbringing stories of the plague of locusts...I can only wonder if one of the other plagues may hit Yemen too.
The Yemeni solution for it all? Eat them. For weeks the newspapers here have been printing recipes on how to prepare scruptuous locusts. Cultural differences aside, the locusts are reportedly high in protein and some reciptes appear fine cuisine. Some articles even go as far to descibe where the meatiest part of the locust is, apparently it's in the breast. I was horrified to find the legs of locusts covering my desk when I entered my classroom to teach, remnants of someone's late afternoon snack.
While so many of my students generously ripped the wings off the insect and extended it to me saying, 'teacher, teacher, try the yummy locust'...well I kindly refused. Something about a locust au natural makes me uneasy. I would pay a Yemeni to bite into one, smile at me while saying in Arabic, "tastes like chicken".
