Selling shells by the seashore

It takes a certain eye to look at the slither of snails crawling over one another and see them as a bevy of escargots bubbling in garlic butter, never mind a means for the poor to feed their children.

Yet a group of South Africans in a poor Western Cape township are surviving on snails: All day at the Moreson Farm apple orchard near the town of Vyeboom, the women crawl under apple trees collecting thousands of snails, which will be dispatched live for European tables.

Most of the workers here shudder with revulsion or peal with laughter at the idea of eating snails.

As for spending hours engaged in the backbreaking work of picking up snails -- it’s just a job, and jobs are few.

But Nomfusi Gwanya, 31, a mother of three who used to work as a kitchen servant, finds the work inspiring. If the business succeeds and grows, she reckons, many others like her will get work.

In a moment of bravery, she tasted the snails and found to her surprise that she liked them.

Gwanya and her fellow snail collectors are rural people from Eastern Cape province who came to Western Cape in search of work picking fruit. Poorly educated and largely illiterate, most of them dwell in squatters camps outside the town of Grabouw and struggle to find even the lowest-paid jobs.

When there was no fruit to pick, times were tough, until a small company in the coastal town of Hermanus set up a snail export business. It formed a partnership with Nomsana, a small project to create jobs and alleviate poverty for women.

Elezane Industries has been collecting the creatures since 2004 for export to Spain, selling them for $1.40 a pound.

The company, which also exported snails to France last year, is exploring other European markets and has a side operation processing snails for the domestic market.

The company collects common brown garden snails, known as Helix aspersa Mueller. In France, they are known as petits gris (small grays) and are not as prized as the larger, paler Helix pomatia, known as escargots de Bourgogne (Burgundy snails).

Snails, one of the iconic dishes of France, are high in calcium and low in fat and calories (unless baked in the traditional manner -- with garlic butter). In restaurants, small round tongs are provided so the diner can hold the shell while plucking out the buttery morsel of flesh with a small fork.

Elezane’s snail collectors approached farmers, who spend good money trying to get rid of snails as pests, and asked whether teams could collect them instead. Some farmers said no and others wanted to sell the snails, but many agreed.

“Now if you work on one farm, he’ll tell his neighbor and he’ll let you on,” said Elliot Kondile, 42, a father of three who leads the snail collection team. “I showed some of them the finished product and said we make this stuff from your farm. That helped a lot.”

In the factory, the snails are sorted, cleaned and chilled to the point where they go into hibernation and seal their shells, so they can be bagged and exported.

The enterprise has had its hiccups: Power cuts were a big problem. At one point, Elezane partner Shelldon Breda arrived to find that all the hibernated snails had awakened and were drooling with stress.

Kondile pays workers about $1.25 for 10 pounds of snails. The money may not sound like much, but Kondile says he is approached by four or five women a day begging to work.

At the start of each six-month snail-collecting season, he runs a workshop on how to tell a mature snail from an immature one. (The mature ones have a ridge around the shell opening.)

“This job has changed things for the better,” Kondile said. “I pay the people. I can spend my money the way I want. I had an old car and I bought myself a new car.”

But for the women collecting snails, it means more than luxury. It is survival.

“Having the extra money from snails changed my life because I can buy food and clothes for my children and I can give my mother some of that money,” said Phumla Mthiya, 29, who earns $114 a month.

As a maid working for a teacher in Eastern Cape, Gwanya made only $28.50 a month. She sees snails as a way to improve not only her life, but those of many others like her.

“That’s why I like snails, because after a time we will give more people work.”

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robyn.dixon@latimes.com