The Discovery of Palm Wine

Do you know how palm wine was discovered? Read on to learn it here! My grand father told me the story of how palm wine was discovered by the natives of  Bamendankwe. The story goes thus. One day, some hunters went into the bush for hunting as it is customarily and noble for them to do so. Generally, they would hunt down any animal that comes their way and is stipulated to be good for home consumption. On this good evening, an elephant came their way and they put up strategies of capturing the elephant. They could not attack it immediately after seeing it.

This is what they did; they divided themselves into two teams, one team went ahead to dig a pit and cover it with grass and the other team remained around the elephant to make sure they construe it into the pit dug by their colleagues. The team that stayed back watched the elephant feeding on tree branches - this required a lot of patience and gentleness. As the elephant was progressively feeding in the bush it cut up a freshest shoot of a raffia palm tree.

When members of the team behind were passing across this palm tree they found a semi transparent and cloudy liquid in the hole produced by the broken raffia branch. They were equally thirsty and did not want to let the elephant see them in case they tried to look for water in nearby streams. So they decided to drink the semitransparent and cloudy liquid. They bent over in turns and sucked up the liquid into their dry throats. It was good to the taste they all affirmed.

They continued hunting and on the next day, they came back and explored the mysterious liquid that tasted sweet and had a kicking action on the tongue. That is how palm wine was discovered by my Mendankwe fore fathers.