Grasshopper Day

There’s a family that lives behind us with at least 12 kids (a home with multiple wives). Most of the time they are pretty quiet (for that many kids!!)....but yesterday morning -very early- they kept screaming and shouting. Not the bad kind of shouting (we’ve heard that around here, too)...this was happy shouting. We wondered what was going on and we soon found out...

As we went outside we saw grasshoppers everywhere. Not just one or two, but hundreds. They were flying around, landing on our house and porch, flying from tree to tree....everywhere. Mama Benna told us about this day a few weeks ago and we started calling it Grasshopper Day. It’s a day when everyone takes buckets and bags and scoops up grasshoppers to cook and eat (yuck!).

Most of our kiddos got in on the action of hunting grasshoppers for Mama Benna to take home. The boys would kick and shake trees and bushes to make the grasshoppers fly out and we would all run around trying to catch them (yes, even Mommy caught a few grasshoppers!).

Laura and Abi (our neighbor next door) were afraid the grasshoppers would fly in their hair...so they covered up! You may wonder where Annie is in all these pictures?? She was inside...she wanted NOTHING to do with the grasshoppers! And Melissa was busy taking video of the event (although she did catch at least 10 grasshoppers!)

Mama Benna was thrilled that we were able to send her home with more than 30 grasshoppers!! She said that if it was possible Benna would eat 100 and Joram would eat 50! Kingy hasn't developed an appetite for grasshoppers just yet!!

This is only the beginning of what we caught!

All around our fence we could hear children laughing and squealing as they chased grasshoppers. We went outside our gate and talked with them, comparing the numbers of grasshoppers we’d each caught and watching them run, jump, and swing shirts trying to knock the grasshoppers down.

Looking up for grasshoppers as someone else climbed the tree to shake the branches!

Searching in the bushes for grasshoppers.

The official tree climber~ In charge of shaking the grasshoppers out of hiding!

This kiddo's trying to catch them with his hand.

So proud of her catch!

The next day when Scott went up to the market he saw a woman cooking the grasshoppers that her children had caught. He offered to buy them from her (thinking he would bring them home and have us each try one!!) but she refused saying that this treat only came around once a year and she wasn’t willing to sell!

This morning as we were walking home from school, we saw a man selling bags of cooked grasshoppers. We decided to buy a couple of them for Mama Benna to take home.

And Scott got brave and decided to try one himself. so gross...

Even though most of our family missed out on eating grasshoppers (oh rats!) we had lots of fun making happy memories of chasing and catching grasshoppers all morning.