Grasshoppers

I squint into the mirror and pluck out another grey hair. “If you pull them out they’ll only grow back faster,” my sisters voice taunts in my head. God.

My mind launches into a tunnel vision version of my future self and I try to picture my long, curly brown hair as a dignified silver. I shake my head to rattle the thought away. But now, everyday, I find myself unconsciously on the hunt for the next intruder.  You’re too early!

Clothes, the same ones that I’ve been wearing for the past ten months and have lost appreciation for, hang in my closet and offer nothing new. I’ve found myself doing serious window shopping on my morning boda boda drive to work, the endless second-hand shops lining the sidewalks in Kabalagala have me taking mental inventory. The shop next to the Johnrich Grocery Store had a high-low dress piece that was taken down but still crept into the periphery of my mind.

Bonni, my boda driver says something. It gets whisked away by the wind, distorted through my helmet. “Wangi?” I ask.

“Do you know ensenene?”

“Grasshoppers? Yes I know them, do you like them?”

“Ah! You have ever tried them? Me, no I don’t like them.”

It is grasshopper season. Sellers with their plastic containers walk the roads offering greasy fried grasshoppers mixed with salt and onion and garlic. Green bodies, both crunchy and soft, a pricey delicacy that seems to be in season only twice a year.

The first time I had tasted them was in Ntinda. After a late night of dancing I wound up crashing on the other side of town. I woke up dazed, unfamiliar with my friend’s place, and completely bewildered by the situation I found myself in: 1) my phone and wallet had been stolen and 2) my pants had busted open and were held together by three conspicuously oversized safety pins. Pathetic and utterly unable to help myself, I followed the voices I heard outside onto the porch. Cigarette smoke lifted around Kojo and Leslie, their conversations swirling around the events that had happened that morning, a bombing in France. Here I was living in Uganda, a part of the world so many people failed to understand and therefore failed to trust, yet it was France, the West, that was making headlines.

I sat down next to them and chugged water. It was already late afternoon, the sun bright and hot made me feel lazy and unwilling to address my predicament: no way to contact my friends, no way to get home. I made a mental shrug and decided not to care, I’d let the day carry me.

I found myself at a pork joint a few hours later. Pants fastened, checked and rechecked, the six of us had exited the compound and walked down the dirt road (bumpy, the fresh nutty smell of burning trash) to the main road. The white minibuses with blue writing sped and stopped to pick up passengers, the conductor leaning out of the left side window to recruit passersby and giving the signaling knock to continue. “Tambala.”

Pork, grilled like a kebab on wooden skewers, was placed in front of us, crisping and hot. There was matooke and kachumbari, a salt shaker, and the woman who brought around a basin of water and soap so we could wash our hands. That’s when Kojo spotted the ensenene seller. An exchange later and the aluminum tray landed on the table. De-winged grasshoppers stared at me, their little beady black eye stunned permanently open, their antennas akimbo.

Yes. Crunchy salty goodness.

It was perfect. New day, new friends, new experience.

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