Termites are all over Africa – they’re famous! There are all kinds of African termites, some voracious consumers of wood, others do a kind of mold farming, but the most well known and ubiquitous kind of termites live in large dirt volcanoes. These insect-constructed monoliths are usually five or six feet tall but many are ten feet or taller. Millions of termites live in the elaborate self-ventilating constructions – with specialized body adaptations for soldiery, working, brood-tending, farming, etc. A few times a year, right after a light rainfall, the next generation of male and female termites will swarm en mass out of the tops of their funnel nests and take to the air, looking to hook up with a member of the opposite sex and start a new multi-million member family.
We had just pulled into an acceptable campsite along the Cameroonian-Togo border when a slight rain fell. Since it was already late, it got dark quickly and we turned on our outside lights to cook by. A trickle at first that eventually turned into a torrent - flying termites beat against the lights, us, and everything else in the vicinity. Every termite mound in the vicinity must have opened its doors because there were literally millions upon millions of them – an ocean of flying termites. They flew into our eyes and hair, and you could not open your mouth for fear of swallowing one or two.
A guide told me that fried termites are considered a delicacy, and I suppose that could be true because, in fact, the mash potatoes we ate that night had suspiciously large capers in them, and we didn’t bring any capers. The male termites apparently follow a pheromone trail left by the female, and it’s quite humorous watching their nose-to-tail pacman-like wandering across the ground looking for an adequate place to start digging the foundation for a new skyscraper.
Termites got into our gear, especially electrical appliances: a bag of batteries had dozens of termites that had crawled through our luggage to find the small opening. We were cleaning out dead termites that had gotten into every crook and cranny for months. With all the excitement, I still felt kind of sad for the poor little critters – odds are not one of those myriad of termites ever produced an offspring.
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