Eating Flying Ants

It may sound odd but ants taste good. Sometime during our first year local schoolboys Momo Vandy, his brother Mansaray Vandy, and Senesi Edward Lahai convinced me to allow them to collect flying ants that were attracted by an outside light that we had on the east side of our house. Kenema electricity was unrelaible in those days. However when the season was right, and the ants were flying, the boys came by at night and collected a few pails full of ants. Their method was simple. The light attracted the flying ants, a pail of water was placed underneath the light, and when ants were in abundance the boys came and dropped them (by hand) into the pail of water. When they had collected enough they then went off and "fried" the ants in a pan. Of course they wanted to see if I was interested in trying them (and I was). They tasted a bit like salted peanuts and weren't bad. I do not think that ants were a common source of nutrition in those days, but the boys seemed to have great fun in collecting them, and enjoyed their taste.

Above photo: Taken on the east side of our house - Senesi Edward Lahai (white shirt) along with his school chums Mansaray and Momo Vandy collect ants attracted by our outside light. Notice the pail at the base of the house. Filled with water, the ants were thrown into this, then brought into our kitchen where after frying them in a pan they were eaten. To me they tasted like salty peanuts.