Kalahuala is a lightly fermented beverage produced by the Garifuna people on the coast on Honduras. It is not entirely clear what the drink is made of, but perhaps it contains palm fruit and sugarcane juice. Additionally, the name calaguala typically refers to a medicinal herb or fern, Polypodium leucotomos, that is common in Central America. Perhaps the drink contains some of this herb.
Every year, in the kingdom of Eswatini, women come together to express their loyalty to the Royal Family. The occasion is called the Buganu Festival, and is named after a traditional wine made from the marula fruit. Swazi women are the traditional brewers of the wine, and come together at the festival with a sense of pride and empowerment.
Iliyaas Muhammad served in the Peace Corps in Mali where he learned about ginger beverages. When he returned to Philadelphia, he and his wife began selling the ginger infused drinks within their community. Now, Really Reel Ginger is a part of Philadelphia’s bustling Reading Terminal Market where they offer a healthy alternative to soda.
Washington DC, home to the President of the USA and a lot of Ethiopian folks. Accordingly, the city is packed with restaurants that serve delicious Ethiopian food…and beverages. If you are looking for a culinary and cultural change from your normal bar, you can sample the beers, wines, and liquors of Ethiopia right here in America’s capital.
South African Apartheid lasted from 1948 into the mid 90s, but segregation had deeper roots that came from the beer industry. Starting in European-owned diamond mines, Africans were not allowed to drink alcohol. Later, in Durban, the state came to monopolize native beer production and sales. Funds from beer sales paid for segregation infrastructures and bureaucracies. This system was copied in most of eastern South Africa.
Ethiopia produces more honey than any other country in Africa. What do they do with it? They make honey wine, or tej. This drink has been consumed by Ethiopians for thousands of years. For most of its history, it was exclusively drunk by royalty. Today, tej is the national drink of Ethiopia.
During the Month of Ramadan, Sudanese Muslims fast together and break fast in the same way. Across the country, everyone drinks hulu mur in the evening, a beverage made by infusing a sorghum bread into water. The mixture is made in the late afternoon, so no alcohol is fermented. Hulu mur serves as a nutritional breakfast and a point of national pride.
Humans have been hunting rhinoceros for their horns for a long time. It turns out, we wanted to drink out of the horn. Cultures from China to Spain, India to Ethiopia, have all carved cups out of rhino horn for its medicinal properties. These cups were luxury items fit for emperors and kings.
In Ghana, palm wine has been an important cultural drink for centuries. Europeans introduced distillation, and palm wine was distilled into akpeteshie. When British colonial government attempted to tax spirits in Ghana, locals opted to distill their gin at home. The drink became a symbol of pride and anti-colonial sentiment. Since independence, the spirit has been legal and culturally salient.
In the correspondence regarding these cargoes, the owner literally measures a human’s worth in gallons of rum: “toutching first upon the Windward Coast, where I would have you dispose of your Cargo if PoSsible. & purchase your Slaves, even sopose you give One Hundred + fifty Gallons Per head [sic]” The letters even use the word “to slave” meaning to fill the ship’s hold with a cargo of humans.
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