The beauty of lake flies

The air was festive and light. Children and adults ran around with buckets as if chasing smoke from the trees. But I get ahead of myself.

Out in Lake Malawi, in the right conditions a seaweed like growth on the surface of the lake becomes a breeding ground for gnat like flying insects, called creatively lake flies. Not just one or two but tens to hundreds of thousands. Seen from 5-10-km it looks like a huge wood fire with plumes of smoke rising high.

If the wind is right the flies can be blown ashore almost 300 – 400 meters on land. The flies become fog like and rumors say that some people have suffocated by this.

They descend on every area of possible landing space to include, walls, trees, bald heads, desks, and shrubs. The first time that they came ashore while I was residing in Khwawa I was away and they painted my walls dark grey. I had left my windows open and they came in without permission. When I returned home it took a great while to clean them all off, some still remain. From then on my neighbors would, with amusement in their eyes, tell me when the flies were landing and I would rush home and close up my windows. I found no reason to appreciate them and maybe even to fear them because once I rode through a cloud and had a bit of trouble.

Back to the festive children and light adults, wait. The adults and children where running around collecting the mounds of writhing insects by dragging the buckets across the leaves of trees and branches. By that time I had known that it was somewhat of a lakeside delicacy. I was slightly shocked to see the kids reach into the bucket and pinch a handful of wriggling flies as if it was tobacco and shove it into their gaping pie holes.

What I learned from this was two fold. One I will never eat bugs unless I get hungry, as I have never viewed it as enticing, two the way we are raised to appreciate things is very important. Eating the flies is a good source of protein and vitamins that are rarely in these children’s diet. Funny how something can create joy in one’s heart and detest in another. God blesses us where we need it.