The Batswana Snack of Choice

Mophane Worms

For six and a half years I have somehow managed to avoid the culinary delicacy of Botswana, the mophane worm.  Then Trace invited me over for tea at her new house after work.  She brought out two snacks, boiled salted peanuts and mophane worms.

At the beginning of every summer, Batswana start salivating over the anticipation of their beloved snack emerging from the ground with the first rains.  This worm is actually a caterpillar with very large spikes coming from its body but they do no good against hungry desert dwellers.  Batswana catch them by the bucket full and Trace paid for her daughter’s first school uniform by catching, cooking, and selling 50kgs of mophane worms. 

She told me that what you do is you get a small stick.  You find a worm and jam the stick inside the little body and drain out the inner puss (unless you catch this mophane worm the very first day it emerges from the ground, then the puss draining is not necessary).  You put the worms in a big pot over a fire and cook them.  Then you leave them to dry out on a piece of cardboard in the sun.   Once they are dry and hard you can rub one against another to get the spikes off.

I’m a bit embarrassed now by all the faces and noises I made leading up to putting a very small piece of mophane worm in my mouth, chewing, and then swallowing it.  I am proud to now say that I have eaten mophane worm and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  That is not to say I will ever eat another one but it tasted like salty, black tea and that was fine.  I have endured far worse much closer to home and attempting to eat room temperature cow tongue and vegetables in aspic at a family gathering sticks out as having been much more debilitating on my gag reflex than mophane worms.


I asked Trace if there was any food that us makgoa devoured with delight that appalled her.  Her answer was quick and short.  Crab.  Whole crab.