This photo gives a good indication of why Rwanda is called the land of a thousand hills. We stopped off on our way from Gisenyi to Musanze at the twin lakes, Burera and Ruhondo. We drove up to a viewpoint and along the way came across loads of kids. Everywhere we went in Rwanda the kids would ask us for our empty water bottles and we’d been wondering what they used them for. Today, we found one use. It seemed like every single child on the way up this hill had a plastic bottle full of grasshoppers to hand. Apparently, they fry them up with chilli oil. We didn’t get an opportunity to try them prepared in this manner, but one member of our group did get to sample a grasshopper. I came back from taking a few other photos and he said, with a surprisingly concerned tone to his voice, ” So… I just ate a live grasshopper.”
As it turns out he’d asked one of the kids what they do with the grasshoppers. The kid proceeded to demonstrate how they prepare them for cooking, removing the legs and wings and then said that some people eat them live. Apparently, it tasted like a grass paste.
This photo is a combination of 7 exposures ranging from -3 to +3. The image produced by Photomatix had a lot of noise so I used Imagenomic’s Noiseware Pro to smooth out the sky and hills in the background.
