I ate a little baby bumble bee, won't my mommy be so proud of me...

Sometime after dinner, Ba Sarjo, the imam and lead beekeeper, brings over a plate full of honey comb. Neene calls me over to eat. She shines the flashlight on the dark stacks. They are not the most appealing stacks of honey comb. For one thing, they are not dripping or glistening. For another thing, I see lots of bulbous white blobs I can only assume are larvae, and the solid yellow cells containing the eggs. But I figure honeycomb is honeycomb, so I’m nonetheless excited as I pick up one of the broken-off pieces.

 The honeycomb was awful. From what I remember of honeycomb, you should be able to press it against the roof of your mouth with your tongue and when you do honey will seep out and fill your mouth and you can squeeze and chew until all the honey is gone and then spit out the wax because I never understood those wax candies and why would anyone eat wax? This honeycomb, however, would not have collapsed under the gentle pressure of a sledge hammer and the only way to consume it was to chomp diligently with one’s teeth for an extended period of time. I did this for a little while but was too repulsed by the texture and too tired from the effort of extracting non-existent honey that I spit it out. Neene, however, did nothing of the sort. I didn’t even see her spitting out the wax.

Amadou joins us and states the obvious: there is not much honey. He begins moving the honeycombs around on the plate and notices that a small pool of honey has collected on the side opposite us. He turns the plate around so the honey is closer to us and while Neene chomps away, he and I dip fingers into the meager pool of actual honey. I make sure my finger avoids the white larvae blobs sitting fatly in the honey. Amadou tells me he doesn’t like that—“that” being the dark and dried up honeycomb—but Neene does. Neene looks up at the mention of her name and says, “I like it.” Amadou breaks off a piece of yellow-studded honey-less comb and asks if I want to try, “This is sweet small.” I say okay and he hands me a piece and I start chewing on it.

It’s not bad at first, but it gets worse as I continue. I spit it out.

This is Musa, not me, but this is what my face probably looked like.

“Did you like it?”
“No.”
“Okay, return to eating here.”

So I return to dipping my finger into the pathetic honey puddle. I return to skirting around larvae. I think, almost with some satisfaction, that it seems I’ve at last discovered a food I will refuse to eat. Bee larvae. I wouldn’t even consider it food, except that Neene is eating them with gusto. I turn to watch Neene and feel slightly sick.

Bee larvae.

Well, at least there is a limit to what I’ll eat, at least I have some gastronomical boundaries, I reassure myself. But as my finger narrowly bypasses another larva glob, I wonder if I’m really ready to give up.

Yes.
No…
Yes?
No. No, I’m not ready to give up.

So, when no one s looking, because I didn’t want Attention, I scoop up a larvae, white and bulbous and looking like death, and pop it into my mouth with some honey. It tastes like nothing at all and has the texture of a tapioca pearl. It spends the briefest of moments in my mouth, not enough time to chew it, not enough time to discover if it has a taste, not enough time to complete the thought: “there is a larva in my mouth,” before it slides down my throat and the thought becomes: “there is a larva in my stomach.”

I sit and imagine what it’d be like if the larvae grew into a bee, then decide I am ready to go to bed. As I’m heading inside, I overhear Neene mention to Amadou that she “is not brave about eating the bee children.”

What?!

I glance towards the plate and sure enough, it seems Neene has been discretely forming a larvae pile on one side of the plate.

Shoot.

I swallowed a bee larva for nothing.