Rain foils phane trade

ONALENNA MODIKWA
Staff Writer | Tuesday January 15, 2008 00:00

The only preservation method for the phane worms is to dry them in the sun to lengthen their shelf life. Exposure to humidity and damp conditions make them rot so that they are not good for eating.

 
The heavy and continuous rains caught others before they could effectively dry their harvest, spelling doom on their effort to make a killing from the natural resource that has been out of season for more than a year because of drought.
One harvester said the rains were a blessing in disguise because people who managed to gather enough worms for sale were the ones who harvested them before they were fully grown for harvest.

 
'This also means that it is not the right quality. Those of us who waited for the worms to grow to their biggest size lost heavily because the time collided with the downpour,' said Kgomotsego Ditirwa.

She noted that the worms grow when there is rain. They reach their maturity stage to start a new lifecycle quickly and run out of season. 'We could not brave the rains to even collect the worms crawling on the ground.
'Still if we could collect them what would we do with it after cooking because they need dry air and sun to effectively dry?'

Ditirwa says when the skies cleared the worms had already gone and they will start laying eggs for another season.

Kitsiso is one of those who lost most of her yields because the worms did not dry properly and rotted instead. 'Two 20 litre buckets are full of rotten worms because they did not dry. I do not know what to do with it because I cannot cook it as relish or delicacy or even sell it but I am just hoping that the South African businesspeople who are our customers will buy it for stock feed'.

Due to the rains, there was reduced harvesting than had been anticipated. The situation has turned into an economic dilemma on the harvesters. Most low-income earners and unemployed women usually cash in on the phane worms to become self-sufficient.
Their main market is South Africa where the worms are canned as a delicacy or alternatively used for stock feed.

Usually when the phane harvest season draws near women team up. They hire a vehicle to wherever there is a lot of phane worms and camp there for some time until the worms run out. They then pack the worms in bags and transport them back home for sale. So the worms also benefit transporters to and from the bushes.
As compared to other years when the country experienced good periods for phane there has not been much sale of phane in the local market due to the rainfall.