aFRica

You know him because the fruit of his
labour episodically irrigates your tongue
whenever summer research takes you to
those parts of Africa where he still plies his
trade. His black and rusty Raleigh bicycle,
the ageless gourds and tired plastic
containers attached to the rear end of the
bicycle (carrier in Nigeria), all bubbling and
foaming in the mouth, and the dark brown
belt of reeds that has gathered mileage by
taking his ilk up and down the trunk of
palm trees since Obatala got drunk in the
mythic process of creation, are all
iconicities of a certain version of Africa that
will just not go away. You know him.
In addition to this generic portrait, my own
palmwine tapper is always a vital source of
reconnection with my roots during summer
vacations in my hometown. Connoisseurs
of the matter at hand know only too well
that nothing beats the early morning
harvest, especially if it comes undiluted
with water. That is why the palmwine
tapper has to beat even the most auroral
farmer to the belly of the bush. The palm
tree knows how to reward the tapper who
sets forth at dawn.
Whenever I‘m home, the pact between my
palmwine tapper and me ensures that he
wakes me up around 6 am on his way back
from the bush with my own reserved
portion of ―the usual‖. I suspect that one of
his kegs was named for me or I was named
for it as Achebe was named for Victoria,
Queen of England. He filled it faithfully
every morning and his ―akowe, mo ti gbe
de o‖ (Book man, I‘ve brought your wine)
was my muezzin‘s call to prayer. My mum
would grumble that I now wake up to the
call of palm wine. Whatever happened to
the Pius she raised to wake up to the
Angelus and morning mass?
I did not hear my tapper‘s call to prayer on
this particular day in the summer of 2008.
The jarring clang of TuFace Idibia‘s ―African
Queen‖ – I‘m sure you all know that song –
was what woke me up. One of my nieces
in the village had been kind enough to set
the said song as my ringtone. Ladies and
gentlemen, please sing with me: ―You are
my African queen/the girl of my
dreams/you take me where I‘ve never
been‖. That was Idibia crooning in my cell
phone. Who could be calling that early in
the morning? I concluded that it must be
some silly friend back in Canada or the US
who‘d forgotten the time difference
between Nigeria and North America. I
hissed and fumbled for my phone in the
greyish darkness of the early morning and
the voice that came from the other end
made me jump up in bed.
―Akowe!‖
―Akowe!‖
That was my palmwine tapper phoning me
– wait for this – from the bush! As I later
found out when he returned from that
morning‘s sortie, he was calling me from
the neck of one of his trees. He wanted to
let me know that delivery would be
delayed that morning and I may not get
my regular quantity of ―the usual‖. Funny
things had happened to his gourds. I
understood. In the village, strange spirits
disguised as villagers sometimes climbed
trees to help themselves to the fruit of
another man‘s labour. It was all part of the
territory. I told him not to worry. I would
accept whatever he was able to supply.
Then it hit me like a thunderbolt! The
familiar and the strange. The uncanny. Try
to imagine an elderly palm wine tapper
atop a palm tree in the village, reaching for
his pocket to fish out his blackberry in
order to discuss the laws of supply and
demand with a customer whose father he
had also served decades earlier under a
totally different economy of meanings and
you will understand why that event, in the
summer of 2008, marked a turning point in
my attempts to fashion new ways of
listening to so many new things Africa
seems to be saying about her historical
Saraba | Issue 13 | Africa 61