There Is Another Native Drink Which Works A Bitter Woe
On The African In The Form Of Intoxication Combined With A Brilliant
Bilious Attack.
It is made from honey flavoured with the bark of a
certain tree, and as it is very popular I had better not spread it
further by giving the recipe.
The imported gin keeps the African
off these abominations which he has to derange his internal works
with before he gets the stimulus that enables him to resist this
vile climate; particularly will it keep him from his worst
intoxicant lhiamba (Cannabis sativa), a plant which grows wild on
the South-West Coast and on the West for all I know, as well as the
African or bowstring hemp (Sanseviera guiniensis). The plant that
produces the lhiamba is a nettle-like plant growing six to ten feet
high, and the natives collect the tops of the stems, with the seed
on, in little bundles and dry them. It is evidently the seeds which
are regarded by them as being the important part, although they do
not collect these separately; but you hear great rows among them
when buying and selling a little bundle, on the point of the seeds
being shaken out, "Chi! Chi! Chi!" says A., "this is worthless,
there are no seeds." "Ai, Ai," says B., "never were there so many
seeds in a bunch of lhiamba," etc. It is used smoked, like the
ganja of India, not like the preparation bhang, and the way the
Africans in the Congo used it was a very quaint one.
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