A Story and Song about Harvesting White Ants in Buganda
During a fieldwork trip to Uganda a few years ago, a research collaborator and interviewee, Peter Kinene, shared with me a story that served as a focal point of the research that informed this book. He explained how, since time immemorial, white ants have been important insects in Buganda. Kinene also noted that in the twenty-first century the insects are so valuable that they are used as a substitute for tax and a delicacy for making paste and sauce. Moreover, harvesting them is a source of employment and of dowry, and sharing them is an act of love and care. As a child growing up in Buganda, Kinene enjoyed seeing white ants appear at the beginning of the rainy season, particularly after an evening downpour. The morning sunshine would hit the anthills, priming the ants for leaving the hills in the evening. If the sunshine did not hit the hills, the ants would stay inside, making it impossible to harvest them. Consequently, their skin continued to grow hard and they appeared with wings in the next season. Kinene’s favorite type of ant was called ennaka. Small and dark with snow-white wings, these ants never built anthills but instead did their breeding underground. Harvesters of the ants engaged in complementary tasks. They would delay or accelerate the harvesting process as they wished. To delay the ants’ leaving their colonies, harvesters simply blocked the hill exits for as long as they needed. And to accelerate harvest, they still blocked the exits, but they also sprayed the colonies with water in the evening to simulate rainfall and cause the ants to go aboveground the following day. An important step in the harvesting process was to construct a sort of enclosure around each hill, using sticks or reeds, and to dig a small collection hole for the ants.
Next, the harvesters lined the collection hole with a young banana leaf that either the sun or a saucepan had rendered flexible. The leaf had to match the size of the hole. The harvesters then took pieces of spear grass and aligned them with the anthill exits, creating pathways that led directly into the collection hole. They also placed a thin, translucent banana leaf at the front of the collection hole to allow light to filter through the collection setup and to act as a sort of beacon for the ants. After the setup was complete, the harvesters removed blockades to the hill exits, and the ants began to leave. Once a significant number of ants had left the hill, the harvesters once again blocked the entrances to the hill so that the ants were unable to return. Those that had managed to escape from the collection hole congregated among tree roots, and the harvesters collected them again when possible. Once the collection hole was filled up, the harvesters removed the ants in batches and placed them inside containers for later processing. They harvested the ants in September and October, accompanying themselves with the song “The Harvester of White Ants” (“Omussi w’Enswa”), which features the following lyric or its variation:
Omussi w’enswa; anaalyanga ku mukuyege
The harvester of white ants; he or she will always eat termites
Omussi w’enswa; nnaalyanga ku mukuyege
The harvester of white ants; I will always eat termites
1Kinene interview, December 16, 2019.