Of Palm wine and responsibility
Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth
Cornelius Hamelberg
# “We don't drink palm wine to get drunk”
I guess that’s why Amos Tutuola titled his novel “ The Palm-Wine Drinkard” and not “The Palm-Wine Drunkard, as the drunken, big pot-bellied Buckingham Palace Baptist Professor of Big English Grammar would erroneously like to point out to his student urchins as an “infelicity” of grammar/ spelling/ orthography or the whatever he happened to have buzzing or sizzling in his brain at the given moment of corrective erudition...
Indeed Sir, WE - some of us - don’t drink palm wine to get drunk. What we do is social, not socialist drinking.
In Nigeria, a special group of Ghanaians ( me, Inti Amoah, Richard Nsiah, Mr Sackey, Bobby Stone, Mr Mensah, Sarpu, another theological guy with a big degree from Oxford, Mr Danquah, Agyemang, Oduro, and a few other Ghanaians would march into the bush ( like Tutuola’s “Bush of Ghosts'' ) to a clearing in the bush in the vicinity of Ahoada somewhere in Ikwerre-land - and there we would sit on some felled palm trees for our “Pan-African Parliament”, our palm wine drinking session, our palm wine drinking summit, our meeting of great minds! In Ghana - if I remember correctly, we fell and then tap the “palmy”. After downing the first calabash full of the frothy stuff, Bobby would become more eloquent, Mr Nsiah - Kumasi man, the unelected leader of the Pan-African nostalgia could start reminiscing about Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana ( this was in the early days of the so-called half-caste Jerry Rawlings' People’s Defence Committees). Depending on the composition of the company and other factors such as time of day and place, palm wine has the uncanny knack of liberating all kinds of otherwise bottled-up memories, and emotions, and promoting some unexpected camaraderie.
Last night I sent this quip to Chidi. I can imagine sitting with him under the mango tree in Owerri sipping some palm wine with him and the possible turn of our conversation, possibly discussing Ogbeni Kadiri, blowing our minds on the savageries of the Biafra war, human sacrifice, juju, witchcraft, child marriage, sexual slavery and other human rights issues in ancient Africa and among the pre-colonial Yoruba in particular…
Much good has come from palm wine. There is for example the Palmwine Music of West Africa, namely, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Brazzaville and Kinshasa, maybe old Fernando Po - what do I know?
Palm wine/ Nkwu Elu is popularly also known as poyo in some parts of Sierra Leone. It’s known to promote chesed, sometimes translated as loving-kindness in some people; it or she also promotes generosity and charitableness. I have not noticed palmy promoting aggressive behaviour, the effect that some other forms of alcohol have on some people, a probable contributory cause to this kind of thing: parliamentary brawls around the world
# “We drink palm wine to defend our houses and heritage. We drink palm wine to discuss, and debate.”
It should be interesting should the Nigerian Senate be converted into a palm-wine drinking session “ to discuss and debate''
But, perish the thought! We are to suppose that the senators from the Twelve Northern Sharia States - especially - would be the ones to be most vociferously, vehemently and venomously against the idea of haram palm wine alcoholic beverages being allowed to be consumed on the Senate premises, let alone to be consumed on the Senate floor as alleged facilitators of sound debate and discussion in the best interests of the long-suffering Naija nation! It could make senators who have never tasted palmy before become more loquacious, and for sure, make some of them lose some of their bearings, their good sense, their good neighbourliness, their statesman-like composure, and blame it all on al-cohol and start dancing
Reminds me of these lines not from The Gates of Eden but from I Want You:
“The drunken politician leaps
Upon the streets where mothers weep
And the saviors who are fast asleep
They wait for you
And I wait for them to interrupt
Me drinkin' from my broken cup
And ask me to open up the gate for you”
Indeed, there is another spirit known as the Holy Spirit in the Hebrew Bible and there’s The Holy Spirit in the Christian Scriptures about Whom we read in the Act of the Apostles and what happened on the Day of Pentecost when the Apostles started speaking eloquently ”in tongues”
13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”
14 Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. 15 These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! 16 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:”
https://www.google.com/search?q=Acts+of+the+Apostles+%3A+Day+of+Pentecost