Amacimbi vs frog's legs

I AM thinking of the frog's legs I wrote about some weeks back which I discovered in a Chinese supermarket, and then the reaction of this lady from Indonesia I am attending college with when I showed her the picture of them I had taken.

"Oooh, they are so nice, and so expensive!" she exulted, eyes full of wonder.

She had another expression in her eyes, reserved for me. She is such a wonderful woman. It was a compliment, some sort of admiration; for she thought since the pictures were in my cellphone, then obviously I should also be eating those things.

It's like the sextapes, if they are in your cell - then you eat those things!

I then told her, of course with a bit of disgust I couldn't conceal, as some other guys from the class too, that yuk, I don't eat that.

But still, she thought we were stupid, and intimated that our dietary selection was primitive, for to her, these frog's legs are the most fashionable, the most delectable food selection in restaurants, just as we regard Nando's or Chicken Inn.

It was then that I remembered that the French are frog eaters too. Ooops, this sounds impolite, but if you eat beef then you are a beef eater, if you eat a chicken, you are a chicken eater, and if you eat amacimbi, you are a macimbi eater and if you eat mice, you are a mouse eater. We should be proud of our traditional foods.

But what I am not sure about now is whether these frogs are some kind of special ones, or it's just any frog that you can catch in any river.

But imagine this reverse scenario. What if you were to go to France, or China, and discovered that their trees have plenty of amacimbi, and nobody there ate them, or they were disgusted of them, just as we are disgusted of frog's legs - this would have landed you in plenty of food, wouldn't it?

Imagine yourself harvesting amacimbi in France and establishing a world market for them in the Diaspora as well as back home where they are not available - after all we get those chickens from Brazil don't we, that many people are always complaining about - as they are eating them?

I can imagine the reverse scenario of a Chinaman, or a Frenchman, coming into an African country and discovering this enormous food source they don't compete with the locals for - I mean if our frogs are the right type they eat. Imagine them harvesting them for free, packaging them and sending them back to China or France for sale, and laughing.

This has got me thinking. I think I want to start a company that harvests and packages frog's legs for export in my rural home of Plumtree, I mean, like I said, during the rain season we have plenty of these things croaking away in our ponds in Thekwane and Tshwangwa.

But I guess even if you were Zimbabwean, but were born in China or France, you would eat these things, as they would have been a part of your childhood dishes.

But not me, no thank you, even if I had been born in France, I think that Plumtree Township DNA that runs in my blood would have straightaway rejected this food.

Well, what I am trying to say is - your food has to look nice doesn't it? Maybe that is the reason why I also don't like amacimbi. Yes, I don't like them, and that is why I only eat them when I am drinking alcohol. There is that other green caterpillar, urgh, that one is serious.

But give me inhloko, or amangqina anytime of the day, there you become my best friend.

But not inhloko or the trotters of amaxoxo please! But maybe when I am drunk . . .

Can you imagine a dish called isitshwala and frog's legs. I think if there was a restaurant in town that had this on the menu it would become a favourite for many. We know how curious people are.

But on a serious note, I think if we can eat those things called amacimbi, we need to have a relook at our repulsion of frogs as a food source. I mean, if you were to put a frog and a caterpillar worm side by side, I think they are birds of the same feather.