Tidbits Wa

In the high mountains where they inhabit the Wa, it is not possible to despise any opportunity to incorporate into the diet different sources of animal proteins. It is for it that between his compilation activities, there is included the apprehension of different types of insects and crustaceans. Many of these animals that for other cultures turn out to be disgusting, are for the Wa not only food of the first order, but an exquisite considered aperitif.

For example when they capture crabs, they usually them in water, and then grind them cook with a miscellany of garlic, ginger, bobbies and salt up to forming an exquisite pasta. A similar stew they do with the grasshoppers, the termites, the scampi and other insects.

That not to despise any proteins source, and even insects that can only be obtained occasionally go so far as to be part of his diet, the food most valued to them is still the honey.

To obtain it they continue a really ingenious method.

After the spring comes they are placed to the watching in some field where there are flowers to which they know the wild bees will come. Then they prepare a small pitfall so that the bees when they go to the flowers field, are with that there are a few small insects that they please to eat placed in the proximity. They locate to these insects for the smell. When they approach to eat, they do not realize that the men have prepared a small thread with a few given very thin pens. While he eats the bee he does not realize that this thread him is fitting to the waist, in such a way that when it returns to his honeycomb it will be easy to continue it for the pens that hang by her.

As soon as the honey source was located, the Wa to wait until the night, when they will light a fire under the honeycomb to kill with the fire and the smoke to the bees, and to be able to take safely both the honey and the larvae that later they will eat.

That nobody thinks nevertheless that the Wa feed on insects. For them, as for some of us, there are an aperitif and an occasional meal.

The base of his feeding is the rice, to which they complement with some vegetables that they cultivate and others that they gather, the fishing, the hunting and the domestic animals that breed, principally hens, goats, pigs and cows.

More information: Zhao Yanshe. - Wa zu shenhuo fangshi (Life style of the Wa). Kunming. 2000

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