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As Bushmeat Consumption Grows, Nigerian Doctors Fear Outbreaks - BLOOMBERG
Once largely a rural phenomenon, eating everything from bats to elephants is increasingly popular in cities too.
Beneath a makeshift shelter of old boards and corrugated tin, Justina Sunday piles dried corncobs into the rusting bathtub that serves as her grill. Squinting through wisps of white smoke redolent of charcoal and spice, she flips strips of meat blistering over the hot coals. Her stall, beside a busy highway leading to Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, is crowded with regulars awaiting steaks, chops and kebabs served with pap—a local porridge—and doused in pepper sauce.
But the meat isn’t the fare you might find in New York, London or Tokyo, as there’s no beef, pork or chicken in sight. Instead, Sunday’s offerings typically include antelope, bat, monitor lizard, porcupine or python—whatever Hausa and Fulani hunters have trapped or shot. And Sunday insists her products are healthier than farmed livestock. “Bushmeat has no fat, it’s natural,” she says. “Our ancestors ate it, and they lived long lives. Even during Ebola my customers still came.”
