Notes on Palm Wine and Palm Oil
My two contributions to the “[James] Olney” African dinner on 11 Feb, 2023:
Nkulenu’s Palm Wine
and
West Africanish Peanut Soup
***
Alas, palm wine is not readily available in the US, so I had planned to make do with a modified version of the palm wine gin fizz and prosecco cocktail proposed by Zoe Anjonyoh in her cookbook, Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen, using Nkulenu’s Palm Wine, an Accra-produced beer-strength drink made from the sap of palm trees. I got lazy and just offered chilled bottles of it.
Coincidentally, the first African novel published outside of Africa was Amos Tutuola’s The Palm Wine Drinkard (1952). Written in Nigerian English (aka “Pidgin English”), it is a reworking of Yoruba folk tales. After being praised by Dylan Thomas, it had an interesting reception: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palm-Wine_Drinkard.
A personal note: after I caught hepatitis (A) in Liberia in 1968 I was forbidden alcohol for three months. No problem, there was s lot of “Cairo” available — Liberian for cannabis, the substance being attributed to the Islamic population and to the trans-Saharan trade. Actually, we acquired our cairo from a local store front pharmacist by the name of Dominique, his French name betokening his Mandingo ethnicity, itself associated, in Liberian eyes, with Islam. He did in fact speak French.
My first drink after abstinence from alcohol was a ceremonial “mid-afternoon” palm wine. The modifier expressses the style of wine. The wine is traditionally tapped in the early morning when it is fizzy and light. By afternoon it is more substantial, richer and less sweet. Evening wine is considered the connaisseur’s delight. Liberians compare the style to the age of women and the effects they produce.
***
Peanut “soup” is usually a stew containing, when affordable, meat often chicken, served over rice, a West African stable. I have devised a “soupy” vegan version from onions softened in palm oil, broth, tomato paste and organic peanut butter, itself based in palm oil. For the record, the palm oil used is marketed as sustainable and is produced on small farms in coastal Ecuador.
Given the devastating effect of its industrial production since the 19th century, palm oil is often disparaged by Western ecologists. It can be found is in many comestible and cosmetic products. “Palmolive soap” just scratches the surface.
Passage on Moroccan Language Contact
The following passage on language contact in Morocco was deleted for reasons of space from my review of Grant’s Oxford Book of Language Contact (2019) [Grant-Lang] in the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages:
There are two historically divergent dialects of Arabic in contact in Morocco, the pre-Hilarian, dating from the initial Arab invasions and rooted in the coastal trade centers; and the Hilarian, resulting from a 12th century renewal of Arabic via Bedouin migrations during the Almorad dynasty.
The Moroccan vernacular, Darija, is internally varied but distinct from and in continual contact with Standard Arabic.
There are also Berber (Amazigh) substrata and three European languages involved, distributed geographically and sociologically and overlaying the Arabic and the Amazigh mozaics (Mrini and Bond 2018).
French and Spanish affected Moroccan Arabic differentially during different phases of colonialism and today English is in the mix. Moreover, younger Moroccans in urban areas code-switch compulsively in SMS messages, often using the Roman alphabet with additional numbers for Arabic letters (3 for ‘ayn and 7 for ḥā, among others). French is still the language many prefer to talk about things romantic or intimate, this perhaps out of a sense of propriety (Hall 2015, pp. 112-121
Ground Hog Day Notes
For intersectionality to serve as a valid critical term, it needs to include itself in its scope: the privilege of reading it in English. Knowing English is the first and most vested global privilege of all, undergirding class, gender and race. Alas!
Cumbias https://www.instagram.com/reel/CniRKyWPNra/?igshid=NDk5N2NlZjQ=
Coq au vin https://www.instagram.com/tv/CnuPlOppoT1/?igshid=NDk5N2NlZjQ= w refresher course
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cn7NVqrjv3z/?igshid=NDk5N2NlZjQ=
Tornado https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cm_pI6oj8bE/?igshid=NDk5N2NlZjQ=
When he sees flocks of egrets he has no regrets
Crown of Sonnets https://www.rattle.com/state-of-grace-by-anna-m-evans
https://twitter.com/timothygreen/status/1613936385660157952?s=61&t=Hvya7LslQ_TmYXu08AvcBQ
Notes 16 Dec
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” – George Bernard Shaw
Most folks, if they look at my behavior, would conclude that I write, am therefore a writer. Whether a good one or not would be an open question.
Schopenhauer. “For a German it is even good to have somewhat lengthy words in his mouth, for he thinks slowly, and they give him time to reflect.”[209]
Schopenhauer went so far as to protest using the pronoun “it” in reference to animals because that led to treatment of them as though they were inanimate things.[234)
Trudeau pere et fils
Maybe Hillary was right and they are deplorable. We nonetheless need to share this landscape with them, and they with us.
“My will is a whisper,
your moan a method,
your sin.”
— Niyi Osundare [Words Catch Fire]
The sallow glow of
sodium street lights is one
with the balmy fog
Literature is beyond politics. Everything is, except politics.
*
As China opens up its dynamic zero covid policy, the name of the thing is changing:
[A health official] emphasized that most cases will be mild, and that the disease should now be called “coronavirus cold 新冠感冒Xīnguān gǎnmào”
. / https://sinocism.com/p/coronavirus-cold-weak-economy-and?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/isolation.html
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20221111/repeat-covid-infection-doubles-risk-of-death
*
Fix it : https://alteritas.net/GXL/?page_id=4595
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cl_gTtrDQP_/?igshid=NDk5N2NlZjQ=
鸡鸡 / jījī / penis
Let’s face the music …
Let’s face the music and dance at DuckDuckGo
Let’s Face The Music And Dance
Seth MacFarlane
There may be trouble ahead
But while there’s moonlight
And music and love and romance
Let’s face the music and dance
Before the fiddlers have fled
Before they ask us to pay the bill
And while we still got a chance
Let’s face the music and dance
Soon, we’ll be without the moon
Hummin’ a different tune and then
There may be teardrops to shed
So, while there’s moonlight
And music and love and romance
Let’s face the music and dance
Before the fiddlers have fled
Before they ask us to come up with the bill
And while we still got that chance
Let’s face that music and dance
Soon, we’ll be without the moon
Hummin’ a different tune and then
There may be teardrops to shed
So, while there’s moonligh
And music and love and romance
Let’s face the music and dance, dance
Let’s face the music, that music lovely music
Let’s face the music and dance