Ọjị and mmanya: kola nut and palm wine

Nothing serious happens in an Igbo house until the kola nut has been broken. Not a wedding, not a funeral, not a land dispute, not a visit from your in-laws, not a business deal. A guest arrives, sits, and before anyone says what they came to say, a plate comes out with a kola nut on it.

There is a proverb for it: Onye wetara ọjị, wetara ndụ. He who brings kola brings life.

What kola actually is

The kola nut is the seed of a tree native to West Africa, about the size of a walnut, with a bitter, faintly astringent taste and a modest hit of caffeine. It was chewed across the region long before anyone thought of putting its name on a fizzy drink.

Igbo people distinguish two kinds. Ọjị Igbo, the Igbo kola, is the one that matters ceremonially: it splits into several lobes, and the lobes are read. The other, gworo, is the two-lobed variety brought south by Hausa traders, chewed as a stimulant and not used for ritual.

How it is broken

The kola is presented to the guest, who touches it and hands it back: the host presents, the guest acknowledges, and the honour of breaking it usually falls to the oldest man present, or to the host, or to someone the host wishes to honour. This is decided out loud and people notice.

Whoever breaks it prays first. He holds the nut, speaks to God and the ancestors, asks for life, health, children, money, safe journeys, and a good outcome for whatever the gathering is about. Those present answer isee, so be it, at the end of each line. The prayer is in Igbo, always. There is a saying that kola does not understand English, ọjị anaghị anụ Bekee, which is half a joke and half a rule.

Then he splits it. The number of lobes is read as an omen: more lobes, more blessing. A nut that will not split, or that has only one lobe, is not shared. The pieces are passed round on the plate, often with alligator pepper or peanut butter, and everyone takes a piece, including people who do not much like the taste. Refusing kola is refusing the welcome.

The kola is small and bitter and everybody eats it. That is rather the point.

Palm wine, the other half

If kola opens the occasion, palm wine, mmanya nkwụ, carries it.

It is the sap of a palm tree, and it is alive. Fresh from the tree in the morning it is sweet, milky and barely alcoholic. By afternoon the wild yeasts have got to work and it is fizzy and noticeably strong. By evening it is sour and a good deal stronger, and by the next day it is on its way to vinegar. There is no bottling it in any meaningful sense. You drink it the day it is tapped, and the taste tells you what time it is.

Two palms give it. Nkwụ enu, "up wine," is tapped from the crown of the oil palm and is the classic. Ngwọ comes from the raffia palm, is a little softer, and has its partisans. Either way the first pour goes on the ground, for the ancestors, before any goes into a cup.

How it is tapped

The tapper, ọtị nkwụ, climbs the palm with a loop of rope or woven fibre around himself and the trunk, leaning back into it and walking up the tree. At the top he cuts into the flower stalk and fixes a gourd beneath the cut to catch the sap overnight. He returns at dawn to collect it and again in the evening. A good tapper knows every tree by name and can tell you which one is sweet, which is strong and which is nearly finished.

It is skilled, dangerous work, and the tapper is a respected figure in any village. He is also, unavoidably, the man who knows everyone's business, because he is up a tree above the whole compound twice a day.

At our table

We cannot tap a palm tree in Airdrie, and imported palm wine is a pale shadow of the real thing. What we can do is keep the spirit of it. Kola is broken before our big catering jobs when the family asks for it. And every soup on our menu is the kind that was made to be eaten at a gathering where somebody has said the prayer first.

Read next: the wine carrying, where a cup of palm wine makes a marriage.