Its throat had been slit, and it had just been dumped, rather unceremoniously, on the hard-packed black earth of the burning area at Atwemonom, the open-air abattoir at the centre of Ghana’s commercial bushmeat trade. The butcher heaves the carcass up onto his shoulder and carries it out of the burning area and across the lane, trailing the smell of freshly cooked meat and a raw, metallic tang. Women were setting up their stalls, laying out huge stainless steel bowls of whole grasscutter and small duiker antelope; hawkers sold ice lollies and foreign salesmen peddle blenders on the thoroughfare behind the slaughter slab; a street-food hawker hunched over his pestle-and-mortar grinding peppers, tomatoes, and onions into chilli sauce. Because wild game tends to be lean, locally sourced and – connoisseurs swear – delicious, it has started to command a premium price in cities like Kumasi, where it is more expensive than beef or mutton. She has been selling bushmeat for around 40 years. The bushmeat at Atwemonom comes from rural areas like Barekese (north of Kumasi), the road between Kumasi and Sunyani, and Konongo, which is on the way down to the capital Accra. That raised a question: where were these viruses coming from? It was slowly smoking some grasscutter. Read our full mailing list consent terms here. African Giant Bush Rat Posted yesterday, 16:49 Mampong Municipal, Ashanti, Ghana 296 views Male and female rat (kusie) if interested pls whatsapp me note both is 200 0240684597 GH₵ 100. The bushmeat at Atwemonom comes from rural areas like Barekese (north of Kumasi), the road between Kumasi and Sunyani, and Konongo, which is on the way down to the capital Accra. It’s about ten minutes from the Central Market. “People were selling bushmeat everywhere,” says Burke. Mostly, the hunters bring in common animals: over 80 million greater cane rats are hunted in the region every year, he says. The Ghanaian police officer searching his bag looked up and said, “Don’t worry, I know the kenkey in London is very bad. “There are animals which are not supposed to be hunted at any time. Once his message was translated into Ghana’s more than 250 languages and dialects, however, it had been simplified to “don’t eat bushmeat”. Some is hunted as far away as the neighboring Côte d’Ivoire. They will send you to court,” says Akologu. “A reasonable speculation is that someone carrying a West African passport, who was probably HIV-infected from [this strain], carried it to northern Thailand, where he almost certainly transmitted it to a sex worker.”. The kitchen is out in the open, with women washing plates in one corner, and pairs of people pounding cassava and plantain into industrial quantities of the West African staple fufu behind a low wall. In the 1980s, Donald Burke,  then the chief virologist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in the US, went in search of a vaccine for HIV. In Ghana, the Forestry Commission regulates hunting. Nairaland Forum / Nairaland / General / Food / Giant Bush Rat That Was Killed At My Workplace :PHOTOS (44695 Views) Young Man Makes Pepper Soup With Bush Rat After Hunting It Down. Nothing actually gets slaughtered here apart from the occasional visibly anxious goat. Climate change and illegal fishing by trawlers from other parts of the world mean Ghana’s fishing industry has all but collapsed. Ghana is the world's largest producer of cocoa and it mines gold and bauxite. Asante tries to keep it as fresh as possible: she keeps a bowl of iced blood handy to sprinkle on the cuts of meat—it makes them look freshly butchered, and the cold keeps the flies off. Since then, he has seen his business grow to generate a healthy profit from the 260 grasscutters he keeps in a small shed in the Accra suburb of Awoshie. In these regions, as logger, miners, and farmers clear more and more of the bush, the population of wild animals has plunged. “It closed the open question about where were the viruses coming from,” Burke says. © 2021 Quartz Media, Inc. All rights reserved. It is hot and dirty work, and leaves an acrid odour and a layer of greasy soot on everyone and everything, The severed head of a bushbuck as its horns are being chopped off. Climate change and illegal fishing by trawlers from other parts of the world mean Ghana’s fishing industry has all but collapsed. Public health officials didn’t mean to tell people to stop eating bushmeat. God had nothing to do with unlawful structures; neither did he have anything to do with enforcing the law. Price is for one stick and will ship as such unless you ask me to take it off stick, Ill happily do that for you. Some prefer to keep the carcasses whole, toss them in an industrial freezer and butcher them just before they’re sold. Parts of Ghana are prone to tsetse fly infestations, which cost cattle farmers in sub-Saharan Africa up to $12m (£9.2m) a year in losses. So Ghana imports an estimated 90% of all meat sold in the country (about $200 million of frozen chicken meat alone was imported in 2013), which makes it relatively expensive. “Nobody came here to buy,” says Acheampong. Inside, the cool, dimly lit covered market smells, aggressively, of fresh meat and ammonia. Inside, there was a low charcoal fire smouldering between two engine blocks. Around three-quarters of all new human diseases emerge from animals, which has led many experts to worry that animal products from places like Atwemonom could pose a threat to people around the world. Some is hunted as far away as the neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire. It is said to be a skilled swimmer and feeds mainly on grass. Asante lays a blue plastic sheet over her table and places her butcher’s block, a spotless section of tree trunk worn smooth by knives and wire sponges, at one end. Although Atwemonom is a registered abattoir, there are few safety precautions on display. They’ll wait for nightfall, load their guns and head out into the bush. In the 1980s, Burke went to northern Thailand to collect samples from soldiers who had tested positive for HIV. Once the bushbuck is clean, the butcher heaves the carcass back up on his shoulder and carries it past the burning area to a large wooden shed full of chest freezers. Handled in cleanliness, always. She turns a corner, past the construction site that will eventually be home to a new multi-story market complex, and dives straight into the heaving throng of what’s thought to be the biggest market in West Africa. Outside there are stalls stacked with huge yellow cow heads that go for up to 350 cedis (around £65). “But eating cooked bushmeat is different.”. “The whole world was in a state of panic. By providing your email, you agree to the Quartz Privacy Policy. Wild game, which has long been a source of protein, has remained essential in many places because it can be difficult to rear domesticated farm animals. “Once an animal is killed, I don’t know how long the virus would stay viable. My own guess is that for international transmission, it’s much more likely that the people are doing the carrying.”. Should you wish to take some food back with you, you might be told it’s best to take a flight that arrives at a quiet time, when there are few customs agents about – like the Saturday night British Airways flight to London, which arrives early on Sunday morning. There were no recorded cases of Ebola in Ghana, but it’s impossible to overstate just how terrified people were that the country was next. The grasscutter, also known as cane rat and referred to as Akranti/Akrantie by many in Ghana, is a wild rodent hunted for food. But addressing supporters to climax the 40th anniversary of the June 4 Uprising yesterday, Mr. Rawlings said Alhaji Ibrahim “is in no position to forgive anyone or anything, not even the bush rat in his hometown. The first messages were wrong signals,” says Dr Bashiru Boi Kikimoto, Head of Public Health at Ghana’s Veterinary Services Department. But what health risks does it carry, and could it spread disease further afield? The stomach contents come free with every order of meat. Outside there are stalls stacked with huge yellow cow heads that go for up to 350 cedis ($85). Habitat and distribution. Chop bars are where most Ghanaians get their wild game, providing 85 per cent of the bushmeat sold to the public. In Ghana alone, the bushmeat industry generates about $135 million in revenue every year. Then, a couple of years ago, all that changed. Some have it gutted and dressed. Most of the market women who run the bushmeat trade are generations deep in the business. Business was great back then. Changing from a traditional outfit of fine cotton printed in primary colours to a worn jersey dress and a black top, Asante replaces the expensive satin scarf on her head with a bright, cheap piece of chiffon. “Ebola collapsed the business totally.”, Public health officials didn’t mean to tell people to stop eating bushmeat. But another question remained unanswered: how did these viruses travel around the world? Changing from a traditional outfit of fine cotton printed in primary colors to a worn jersey dress and a black top, Asante replaces the expensive satin scarf on her head with a bright, cheap piece of chiffon. The restaurant sends out a constant stream of savory aromas: rich, oily palm nut soup, then earthy, peanutty groundnut soup. Forestry Commission inspector Moses Akologu is in charge of keeping track of the catches that arrive in Atwemonom. Chop bars are eateries – usually with plastic chairs, low tables and huge portions – that specialise in regional, just-like-mama-made-it dishes (chop means “to eat” in West African Pidgin English). She turns a corner, past the construction site that will eventually be home to a new multi-storey market complex, and dives straight into the heaving throng of what’s thought to be the biggest market in West Africa. During open season hunters can kill a rapidly shrinking list of species that are not on the endangered list (including bushbuck, duiker, civets, warthogs, and squirrels). Asante will pack up her stall, wash the blue plastic sheet and scrub the butcher’s block and the table again, ready for the next day. She scrubbed her table clean the night before, washing it in the small gutter built by the bushmeat vendors to channel blood away from their stalls. Your address during the 10-week pre-service training will be: “Your Name,” PCT, Peace Corps Ghana P.O. When Burke questioned the military recruits about their possible sexual exposure, most of them said they had been to a single massage parlour north of Chiang Mai. “The elephant is also good meat. The slaughter slab is actually where carcasses are scrubbed of singed fur and soot. During this part of the year hunters are only supposed to go after grasscutter, which are farm pests. Communications MailMail usually takes two to eight weeks to arrive. Bushmeat, from wild animals captured for food, is a valuable source of protein in Ghana. The West African shaggy rat (Dasymys rufulus) is a species of rodent in the family Muridae. The smell of charred flesh drifted over from an enclosure of timber and zinc roofing sheets: the burning area. The Ghanaian version of the bush taxi is termed the tro-tro. Undeterred, this morning Asante takes some duiker and grasscutter out of her freezer and has a porter carry it to her stall down the hill in the Central Market. She scoops some into a plastic bag. It can be reproduced under a Creative Commons licence. Over 80 million greater cane rats are hunted in the region every year. Pretty much everything conceivable is on sale in the narrow lanes of the market, from vintage Kente cloth to freshly ground peanut butter. Should you wish to take some food back with you, you might be told it’s best to take a flight that arrives at a quiet time, when there are few customs agents about—like the Saturday night British Airways flight to London, which arrives early on Sunday morning. “If you bring it here and I catch you, I will seize it all for the government. When there was meat going spare, Asante would sell it. The tiled concrete floor is slick with blood and water made murky by the soot from the singed carcasses. Up the hill at Atwemonom, the butchers will douse the fires in the burning area and wash the slaughter slab. When there was meat to spare, Asante would sell it. It’s a contentious term. He dumps it in a blood-spattered deep-freeze, next to another antelope and a few grasscutters. Our emails are made to shine in your inbox, with something fresh every morning, afternoon, and weekend. Behind him, a woman pours a bowl of blood over a low wall, sending the bluebottles that had settled on it into a frenzied cloud. That raised a question: where were these viruses coming from? He dumps the steaming carcass onto the blood-spattered slaughter slab. When Burke questioned the military recruits about their possible sexual exposure, most of them said they had been to a single massage parlor north of Chiang Mai. To protect them, the Forestry Commission has established 16 reserves around the country. A mature goat’s head and a full set of feet cost about 25 cedis, and the butcher swears by the quality: “This meat is so good people will smell your soup from far away,” he says in Pidgin. There was a healthy supply of bushmeat and a constant stream of customers. The only sanction for illegal hunting is being fined a (usually modest) sum of money. Even then, it was known for its bushmeat: the name Atwemonom is a compound word in Twi—the language of Kumasi and the surrounding region—that translates roughly as “fresh antelope.”, Acheampong ran a bushmeat stall down the hill in the Central Market before coming back up to the abattoir about two decades ago. They are not social animals and spend their life alone. Their population, he says, is pretty healthy: “Every three months, they give birth, and they can give birth to ten.”. Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo has declared 2019 to be the "Year of Return", saying it is the country's responsibility to "welcome home" Africans whose families were forced into slavery. At around 8.30 in the morning, Adjoa Asante* arrives at Atwemonom to pick up her stock for the day. Young rats leave their birthplace to find their own small territory for surviving the winter. One stall specialises in metal tools for picking cocoa (one of Ghana’s biggest exports). Studies have backed up this hypothesis, by showing that non-human primates hunted for meat had a high rate of simian immunodeficiency virus, from which HIV is thought to have originated. Meanwhile, Ghanaians are increasingly willing to shell out for healthy, natural foods. The 2013 West African Ebola epidemic probably originated when a two-year-old boy in rural Guinea played with a fruit bat, fell ill and died two days later (fruit bats are thought to be the reservoir for the Ebola virus). “We found that all of the variants of HIV, plus others, were present in the Congo Basin,” says Burke. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical seasonally wet or flooded lowland grassland and swamps. Grasscutter is known to carry about 40 zoonotic pathogens, including parasites, bacteria, viruses, and fungi. Behind him, a woman pours a bowl of blood over a low wall, sending the bluebottle flies that had settled on it into a frenzied cloud. Then she lays a blue plastic sheet over her table and places her butcher’s block, a spotless section of tree trunk worn smooth by knives and wire sponges, at one end. After about ten minutes, the rust-coloured fur is gone. Former President Jerry John Rawlings has taken Ghanaian businessman and former President of AngloGold Ashanti Samuel Esson Jonah to the … Dark Blue Leashes lead set and Adjustable soft harness for guinea piglet rat hamster ferret prairie dog and small pets Bizbn. Up the hill at Atwemonom, the butchers will douse the fires in the burning area and wash the slaughter slab. The night before, she had scrubbed her table clean, washing it in the small gutter built by the bushmeat vendors to channel blood away from their stalls. Some species are near extinction. After about ten minutes, the rust-colored fur is gone. It’s now about 9am. They have cheek pouches in which they carry food and other items intended for storage. “We’re making light soup, or you can call it akrantie soup,” says Dominic Erasmus. Asante strides past preachers bellowing over loudspeakers, overloaded delivery trucks, and idling buses bound for Accra. A lack of it has stunted millions in the region. At around 8:30 in the morning, Adjoa Asante* arrives at Atwemonom to pick up her stock for the day. The trunk is the best part.”. It’s also unclear why the term, from the French viande de brousse, is almost exclusively used to refer to wild game from West and Central Africa. Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean, in the subregion of West Africa.It has an area of 238,533 square km. The smell of charred flesh drifted over from an enclosure of timber and zinc roofing sheets: the burning area. The horns are cut off when the animals are delivered, and are sold for the magical powers they are believed to possess, A woman wiping down the serving counter at the end of the day at a popular chop bar at Atwemonom, {{#verifyErrors}} {{message}} {{/verifyErrors}} {{^verifyErrors}} {{message}} {{/verifyErrors}}, Ghana’s bushmeat butchers: 24 hours at the slaughter slab. It’s how she got her start in the trade, which would eventually put her seven children (four girls, three boys, all grown) through school. Forestry Commission inspector Moses Akologu is in charge of keeping track of the catches he encounters, recording the species, method of death, sex, weight and price of each, along with whether the specimen was pregnant and where it was hunted. There are no taps; the water comes from yellow jerry cans filled up around the corner. Grasscutter is known to carry about 40 zoonotic pathogens, including parasites, bacteria, viruses and fungi. 4.5 out of 5 stars (279) 279 reviews $ 10.00. When you’re leaving Ghana, airport security seem to be more worried about drugs and terrorism – they aren’t looking for food. It has a short, thick neck and shiny slippery fur. She doesn’t really eat bushmeat. The market woman is saving the animal for a day when business is brisker. A few years ago he wouldn’t have had the time to stop and chat. 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