This village woman was delighted when I said that I would love to try the snail meat that she was cutting up with a machete in a wooden trough. From Grains of Golden Sand:
"I once spent a few days in a remote village just north of the Zaire River, 50 miles west of Lisala. It was March, which happened to be snail season. All other activities were put on hold while villagers frantically harvested the giant forest snail.
"The people had laboriously hauled water into the now seasonally dry wetlands and made a kind of mud bait, which was spread about to attract the snails. Men, women, and children collected the six inch long gastropods and hauled them by the thousands back to the village.
"Live snails were packed and sold to passing river traffic for resale in the capital, and many were consumed on the spot. I was treated to a meal of forest escargot---cleaned with citrus juice, minced fine, and fried in palm oil with onion, hot red peppers and lots of garlic. Finger-lickin’ good!"
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