Once two sparrows were sold for a penny. (See Matthew 10:29.) Today in Zimbabwe, 10 mice go for a dollar. Children in the impoverished country sell the tiny rodents as snacks. They bring home the cash to fill their own hungry bellies.
Zimbabwe abandoned its own currency in 2009. The nation experienced years of hyper-inflation. As costs soared, Zimbabwe’s dollar lost value so quickly that it became worthless. By 2011, even a trillion Zimbabwe dollars wouldn’t have purchased a single roasted mouse to eat.
Today, the country uses a combination of other currencies: the South African rand, Botswana pula, British pound sterling, Japanese yen, European Union euro, American dollar, and Australian dollar, among others. These youthful hunters hope to pocket a few of those each day to help meet their families’ needs.
With headlamps to peer through the darkness, children in rural Chidza village in central Zimbabwe scamper out at night. Being careful not to get their own fragile digits caught, they set the bars on old-fashioned, rectangular, spring-loaded mouse traps. Then they lay the wooden traps gently along lightly trampled paths in the grass. Seeds of grain set the bait. And they wait.
Sometimes within minutes, a snapping sound alerts the kids. They rush to retrieve their catch. On a good night, the children say they can catch between 50 and 100 mice. But in addition to watching out for their own fingers and toes as they handle the powerful mechanisms in the dark, they must also be on the alert for snakes. Those night-time hunters are out and about too, seeking the very same rodent prey.
Field mice feed on grains, grass, and wild fruits. They skitter through the cornfields after dark, gorging themselves on the kernels that make them particularly plump and juicy as snacks.
After a night of hunting, the village children hand over their catch for cooking. The mice are roasted whole on an open fire. The flames burn off the soft fur. They are finally salted and left to dry. Then the children heap them into dishes and sell them to passersby on the road to neighboring South Africa.
Standing by the roadside, the children attract travelers by waving skewers of crispy, roasted mice. Some outsiders see eating mice as a sign of severe poverty. But customers seem to relish them as a delicacy.
In either case, the young entrepreneurs say they are doing a brisk business.
