White ants bring all activities to a stop

For reasons only known to God, at around this time each year, the wildebeest get it into their ugly heads that they must move in their hundreds of thousands from Serengeti in Tanzania to Masai Mara in Kenya.

To the tourist industry, this is an opportunity to revive flagging fortunes and hopefully push up bed occupancy in Masai Mara’s lodges and tented camps to the magical 100 per cent.

To the crocodiles lazing on the banks of the Mara River and the lions, cheetahs, hyenas and wild dogs roaming the plains, it is feasting time.

On the eastern slopes of Mount Kenya, the onset of the (long) rains in April heralds a spectacle every inch as ecologically significant and spectacular and as the wildebeest migration.

From the bowels of the earth, white termites rise in their millions and for a few hours each day, the air is full of the little winged things which also cover much of the ground.

During these brief moments, it is feasting time for much of God’s creation. The birds cease all their normal activities such as twittering up in the trees and the snakes, ants and even the lowly worms come out to enjoy a delicacy that the ground serves up only once a year.

It is, however, human behaviour that I find most fascinating during the termite season.

From the malnourished boy in the village for whom it is a once-in-a-year opportunity to gorge himself sick on as much proteins and fats as he can take, to the city sleeker who parks his SUV by the roadside to buy the roasted ants, everything else takes a back seat.

People in the village can predict with almost unerring accuracy the day and even time when the termites will come out of the ground.

When it rains at night in April or May, and this is accompanied by thunder and flashes of lightning, they know the white ants will start coming out of the ground by early afternoon and the men, especially boys start preparing for them.

They cut twigs with which to construct tent-like structures around the exit points which are covered with anything from blankets to banana leaves with a hole left on one side leading to a trap.

Since the insects are programmed to follow the light, they end up in the trap and are swiftly transferred into a waiting container.

Those not consumed raw immediately are put in a pot and killed over a fire. Thereafter, what I characterise as the white ant commerce kicks in, and boys and sometimes even grown men rushing the delicacy to the shopping centres and bars where the termites are sold and consumed.

So compelling is the sight of these insects coming out of the ground that many people cease all other activities to concentrate on trapping them.

A good example is my relative who as a young girl going to school one day in a new uniform when she came to a place where the white ants were coming out of the ground.

On seeing them, she forgot all about school and started building a structure to trap them. Looking around for something to cover it with and finding nothing, she tore up her new uniform and used it as a cover.

Nobody was surprised when soon thereafter, she and formal education parted ways.

If a white ant comes out of the ground and survives a human being’s trap, it will be lucky to get past the snakes and other creepy-crawlies in its path and eventually, the birds circling in the air. Its enemies are numerous.

So why does it come out of the ground for what is virtually a certain death?

Feeling wise after a few drinks, I hazarded to some new friends I made the other day that it is a biological imperative.

I suspect that April and May are the insects’ mating season and sure enough, their wings give them the aura of a white wedding.

Besides, after shedding their wings and landing back to earth, they pair off into male and female.