In Zimbabwe, mopane worms are a staple part of the diet in rural areas and are considered a delicacy in the cities. They can be eaten dry, as crunchy as potato chips, or cooked and drenched in sauce. When harvest season for the worms began recently, I decided to document the process, and I found it somewhat stomach-turning. But the worms can be mighty tasty and they're very nutritious. Here's the scoop on mopane worms.

THE MOPANE WORM

Zimbabwe's national coach Rahman Gumbo has resigned after failing to lead his side to the Africa Cup of Nations tournament in neighboring South Africa next year, a local daily reported Saturday.

"Gumbo resigned from his post just hours after a ZIFA (Zimbabwe Football Association) board meeting," the privately-owned NewsDay said citing sources at the football association.

Zimbabwe's second city Bulawayo has ordered its residents to flush toilets at the same time once a week to prevent blockages during frequent periods of water rationing, the mayor said Saturday.

"We are going to have a big flush every Monday to push all the waste that would have accumulated during the water rationing," Thaba Moyo, mayor of Bulawayo, told Agence France Presse.

An AIDS awareness campaigner and his lawyers said Friday they are taking a groundbreaking test case to Zimbabwe's highest court to force police and prison authorities ensure HIV sufferers get their life prolonging medication.

Douglas Muzanenhamo said in papers filed at the Supreme Court that he was denied appropriate antiretroviral treatment in jail for three weeks last year and his condition veered toward death.

Zimbabwe's prisons are often condemned for squalid overcrowding but a thief begged a magistrate to lock him up permanently, saying life was better behind bars, state media reported Tuesday.

Repeat offender Lovemore Manyika, 22, pleaded for life imprisonment in a note during mitigation after he was convicted for housebreaking.

Rampaging elephants are terrorizing Mozambican villages near the Zimbabwe border, attacking people, trampling crops and scaring children, state-run newspaper Noticias reported Wednesday.

"We are using traditional ways to try to scare the animals, but all in vain, because whenever we do something, the monsters disappear for a few days, and when they come back there is no peace," local farmer Joseph Maithe told the paper.

Mali's coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo has pledged the safe release of three top African foreign officials stranded in Bamako after the putsch, an African Union source said Saturday.

AU Commission chief Jean Ping spoke to Sanogo on the phone on Friday and was assured the foreign ministers of Kenya and Zimbabwe, as well as a Tunisian secretary of state in charge of Arab and African affairs would return safely.

Susan Dhliwayo was stunned when she pulled her car over recently to pick up a group of male hitchhikers and they refused to get in. The reason? They feared being raped.

Sensational reports of gangs of beautiful women picking up male travelers to have sex and harvest their sperm in condoms have gripped Zimbabwe in a dizzying mix of taboos, rituals and the downright bizarre.

A man who says he taught Zimbabwe's veteran President Robert Mugabe in kindergarten says that as a young boy he was known to teachers for his short temper and discipline, state media reported Saturday.

Oscar Munyoro Katsukunya said he taught Mugabe, who turned 88 on Tuesday, at his home village of Murombedzi in 1928.

A court in Zimbabwe has sentenced a 17-year-old boy to be caned after he posted a picture of a woman on Facebook with a caption that called her a prostitute, state media said Monday.

The Herald newspaper said magistrate Tinashe Ndokera found the boy guilty of criminal insult, and ordered that he be caned twice.