do

We arrived in Berberati three days ago after two days on the road – the second day a very bumpy one on a dirt road. The more westward we got, the more rain-foresty the view became. The trip went very well, and although the rack on top of our car broke, it broke only a few miles out of Berberati, so we were able to get to our new home with all our luggage intact! Because the place we live is on an open compound (no walls, just a lot of grass and trees surrounding our home) we are already having quite a bit of interaction with our neighbors.

 

Early in the evening a couple days ago, I decided to take the boys to explore a small food market just beside our house. Women work in their fields during the day, then bring their goods to sell at this market in the early evening hours. Some women were selling piles of cooked caterpillars, called do (pronounced “dough”) in the Gbaya language. I was intrigued by the piles of crinkly black caterpillars, but they looked far from appetizing.

 

As I was threading my way back home through a long row of women sitting on stools selling tomatoes, greens, peanut butter and bananas, I heard a woman exclaim appreciatively in Sango, “The little white boy eats caterpillars too!” I looked down at the three year old holding my hand and trailing slightly behind me, and saw that, indeed, the back end of a little caterpillar was just disappearing into his mouth. Upon being questioned, he affirmed that yes, someone had given it to him, and yes, it tasted good!