Eating Beans

I am sitting on a bench outside the chicken shack. I am eating beans. I am watching motorcycles flutter past. I am being rained on. I am crossing my ankles. 

Guingan Style

Speaking to likely inevitably Mr. Diallo found out he was Mr. Bah. He was a bit drunk and me not really but our conversation was in four languages. He was selling prepacked semi-local snake oils and powders. Wearing sunglasses too. I saw him later drinking his earnings, and selling still.

And we were sitting on a log that termites had finished with, balancing. Palm wine is 2000 francs guinéens per skin, about a litre. Easy to drink, even when it’s hot. And it’s always hot. Or warm. There is no good equilibrium between sweetness cloying sweetness and vinegar pee fart juice. But some things don’t matter when you’re drinking.

There was a young girl wearing yellow, including a bucket on her head that was yellow. An older girl went by with what are those pancakes in a bit of brown paper. Presented them to some seated men. Commissioned undoubtedly, she didn’t eat any of any of them.

I was holding a chicken with my feet. A cock at that, seven dollars at that. But its legs were tied together with a band of blue so it wouldn’t have gotten away quick even if it had been inspired to go and if I hadn’t been gently retaining it. But I got up to pee on the other side of the dry streambed so I confided the chicken to auntie sitting just in front of me selling tappets, and she confided it to her sister next to her. I came back from the openair bathroom finding the pancake lady. One thousand each to break the bank so emptied my pockets acquiring them, brought them back to share. Oily and leavened a bit and with rice flour and tepid and a bit hard so we devoured them.

Time to go cause the wine and the wine are gone. Back to bikes. Back to the market. Bought more wine, the red kind in the bottles that are repurposed to hold gasoline later. So it can get hot against my sweaty back on the way home. Or we could send it with mom. Ended up choosing the later. Better for transport, worse for potential hydration on the ride home. Two almost crashes and one real one, involving a domesticated animal.

The road is flat and rocky, barren, exposed, gravelly, flesh wasting away to expose the hard white bone beneath. I traded bikes and rode the “Eastman” blue one with the upside down bars and bent cranks. It had a slow leak that got faster. Later we found out that there were two trous. The chain was skipping and descending frequently too so frequently that I finally gave up flustered and traded back. The air boiled away, leaving only dust and light behind, each competing for my antagonism but instead they got beat by yeast+sugar. 

Palm Wine

We went to visit Thiako’s uncle in Tcherôt, an old village at the end of a long winding track into the bush to the south and east of where we were staying. Before, many families lived in Tcherôt, but they had all moved away to the city and to Senegal; only his uncle and his small family remained as permanent residents. Despite the paucity of inhabitants, the village is well known as a place of palm wine collection, and any decently learned child from the sub-prefecture could point out the appropriate turnoff from the main road.

We were guided to the place where his uncle was working by his young son Talan, a small boy with eyes and head equally round. We found his uncle and others at their camp, a low place, where a stream would flow during the rainy season. They were collecting palm wine.

Palm wine, as collected by the Coñagui people of northern Guinea, refers to a family of drinks made from the sap of a variety of palm tree. Thiako’s uncle explained the process to me while his nephew August kept working, and Thiako translated and elaborated as necessary.

“Palm wine is collected during the dry season, while the palm trees are flowering and fruiting. During the dry season, honey wine replaces palm wine as the tipple of choice, as the honey harvest is performed at during the last month of the dry season. Female palms (or the female parts, recognizable via their more prominent fruiting bodies) are sought as they produce more sap than the males. These fruiting bodies are located at the crown of the tree, requiring an often significant ascent for all but the youngest of palms.

For this purpose, a sort of harness/sling is fashioned from a few long pieces of palm frond. Two rigid bands are formed (presumably with hot water) into U-shaped sections. The long flexible tips of the two fronds are braided together into a thick rope, and then joined with the other ends in a sort of square knot, easy to tie and easy to untie. The result is an oval-shaped  hoop, fitting the diameter of the trunk of the palm and the back of the climber. Additional flaxen rope is wrapped around one side of the oval for abrasion resistance where the contraption slides along the tree.

After ascending, the trunk, barefoot for increased traction, all of his kit swinging from its strings, the climber removes one of two sharp bamboo-handled chisel from their bamboo sheaths (the two chisels are identical, maybe the extra is a backup?) and cuts a small hole at the base of the fruiting body. A small piece of young frond is wound into a cone and pressed into the hole to serve as a funnel. The climber then takes an empty plastic bottle (repurposed soda or water) and suspends it beneath the funnel, attaching it with string to the fronds above. The sap starts to ooze within minutes.

The process (cut spout capture)  is repeated four or five more times around the crown of the tree, one bottle per fruiting body. Then the climbing process is reversed, and the climber seeks out a new tree.

An average palm will fill an average water bottle in about 12 hours. So, twice a day (in the morning and in the evening), the bottles must be emptied. The hole can also be plugged with a wadded up frond, so as not to waste nor attract more insects and sugar-loving animals. On the ground, the contents of each bottle are filtered (a plastic bottle cut in half with a bit of fabric inside) into large bidons (20-liter vegetable oil containers). As the bidon becomes full, a thin white foam—the head, really—puffs out. This indicates the freshness of the wine. Checking the filter afterwards shows bits of palm, windblown detritus, and some insects that died happy.

The sap is not naturally alcoholic. Freshly tapped, it is very sweet, and only a little bit tangy. However, yeasts naturally present (in the air, in the containers, everywhere) metabolize the sugar and , within a few hours of being tapped, create a wine that is distinctly acrid, slightly sweet, and perhaps three to seven percent alcohol by volume. The more it sits, the stronger it gets, until all the sugar is metabolized, and then it turns vinegary. It is drunk at all of these stages.

Traditionally palm wine is offered to strangers on arrival. The vessel, whether a plastic goblet or a traditional clay jar, must always be filled to the brim. Palm wine is also to be shared at partings. All ages and sexes drink palm wine, and all times of day are acceptable.