Do Mopane Worms Weep?

A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.

At the beginning of my twenties, I tried vegetarianism. I learned to enjoy nuts and eggplant prepared in all kinds of weird ways.

I quit soon after I discovered that anti-carnivores make unsavory tourists. Vegetarians miss out on a central ingredient of many local cultures—dead meat. In small talk with fellow travelers, I made fun of myself. As a food tourist, I just couldn’t stomach not eating meat.

To celebrate the big four-o, I am at Mala Mala Game Reserve next to South Africa’s Kruger National Park—another life experience on my travel bucket list. Like my friends, I grew up watching my share of PBS nature shows and bingeing All Creatures Great and Small. By the time I arrived in South Africa, I had come to think about animals—from wildlife to house pets—as friends who spoke a different language.

For lunch, I was about to feast on mopane worms—an African dish that is a diet staple in the rural areas and a delicacy in the cities. Before they are harvested, mopane worms are colorful caterpillars who dine peaceably on the leaves of the mopane tree. Fried, then simmered in tomato sauce, onions and spices, the finger-sized, high-protein little morsels are akin in flavor to slightly charred steak.

After a week in an open jeep surrounded by the cycle of life and death, I understand all too well that my meals mean someone, somewhere, has been hunting, catching, destroying or killing some other living organism. A wormy luncheon is just another example of death in the service of life. Or at least death in the service of delaying death.

At night, in my animal-bound leather travel journal I epigram that I am a biodegradable commodity. I jot down “T” for Trump, noting the big upside of death is that dictators and wannabe dictators all die, eventually if not soon enough. In my coffin I will escape cancel-culture censors. And death will finally declutter my closets.

Seated mid-day on a wooden veranda, I look up from my journaling to watch a herd of elephants about a third of a mile distant. A dark gray, dusty bull elephant about the size of a hulking dump truck is shepherding eight elephant cows and three calves. The entire herd is drinking, splashing, bathing, frolicking in a shallow stream.

African elephants, my guide tells me, can live 70 years—on par with the life expectancy of an American male. As I think of it, my one and only life is a little more than half over. I don’t fear death; I fear the unraveling of life’s travel arrangements.

With the taste of my wormy lunch still crawling over my tongue, I stare off into the distance, face drooping. I picture clusters of inconsolable, weeping mopane worms searching for missing aunts and uncles, cousins, siblings, parents, friends. I imagine a Covid-like plague sweeping through their tree—randomly, cruelly, carrying off their brethren.

I am sad for the helpless worms, for the dead who feed me. Melancholy sours my stomach.

When a waiter walks by carrying platters laden with barbequed meats carved from antelope, warthog, ostrich, gazelle, giraffe and wildebeest, I ask for a glass of water.

Click here for more short stories set in South Africa.