TheyвЂ™re also harvested en masse by organized groups making use of ever-evolving traps. TheyвЂ™re collected ad hoc by children and individuals who pluck them from leaves or sweep them from the ground to cook or to sell.

The trapping of nsenene has long been a traditional source of both food and income in parts of Uganda where the crickets swarm twice a year after the rainy seasons. ItвЂ™s also about the meeting of mythology and economics, the fraught confluences of tradition and technology, climate change, opportunity, and magic. Of course, the book isnвЂ™t just about harvesting bush crickets. The creatures are called nsenene in the Luganda language spoken in AfricaвЂ™s Great Lakes region, including Uganda, where the photographer lived and worked for 10 years until the late summer of 2021. Though theyвЂ™re generally referred to as grasshoppers, Michele SibiloniвЂ™s new book, Nsenene, is in fact about the nocturnal harvesting of bush crickets ( Ruspolia differens if we want to get specific).

Mind magic graphic audio