Low alcohol content fermented beverages are thoroughly enmeshed in the social and economic spheres of life among most peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa. And so are commercial and cosmological areas. The traditional role of low-alcohol content fermented beverages among the people of Sub-Saharan Africa has often been characterised as one of integration, marked by the relative absence of culturally, recognised social and physical problems.
The traditional fermented beverage of the people from interlacustrine region which include Nyambo, Haya, Nyankole Baganda Nyarwanda Rundi is a banana-sorghum wine that they refer to as beer in English and pombe in Kiswahili.
In Luhaya or Lunyambo, banana beer is called "rubisi raw or unripe or amarwa which is also employed as a general term for all alcoholic beverages. Alcoholic beverages are thoroughly enmeshed in Haya or Nyambo perception of health maintenance, illness and healing. Traditionally, banana beer is one of the first substances (sometimes mixed with various herbal medicines) given to a mother and her baby after birth to increase their strength.
According to folk knowledge, drinking small quantities of banana gin can improve the appetite and can help relieve stomach aches. In addition, small doses of gin may be given to infants and children to kill worms (ebijoka) that are believed to live in the stomach and cause health problems, including malaria.
Therefore, it is believed that by drinking alcohol in moderation, one can lower the likelihood of a malaria attack. This is in accordance to a study Symbolic Mediation and Commoditization, A Critical Examination of Alcohol Use Among the people from Kagera. The study which has been cleared by the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), was conducted by Robert Carlson.
Carlson is the Director of Ethnography on the Dayton Colombus AIDS prevention research project, School of Medicine, Wright State University in the United States of America.
According to the study, the consumption of banana beer is considered an essential feature of the diet. Moreover, the consumption of banana beer is believed to contribute to a person's strength generally including the strength of one's blood. Bananas beer serves as an apt mediator because its controlled
consumption suggests the subjective wholeness of a human being both the valued quality of self-control and its opposite. The study says that the most conspicuous context in which the symbolic mediating role of banana beer is replicated is in offerings to the ancestors. If a father and son live near one another, a man will commonly present his father with a calabash of beer whenever he prepares it. If a man's father had died, he may present his ancestors with beer by placing a calabash at the altar in the traditional house, thereby conjoining symbolically the domains of the living and the dead. If a man lives in a Western style house, he may put the beer in a corner that symbolizes the traditional altar. "If a man does not make offerings to his ancestors, no other alcoholic beverage may be substituted because the ancestors knew only banana beer in the past, "explains the study, warning that banana gin cannot be used as a substitute because it is described as foreign.
Haya or Nyambo traditions maintain that to use banana beer properly means to refresh oneself okwehoreleza or to quench a thirst (okutamba eiliho) or to be happy and hilarious. The goal of consumption is not to become either slightly drunk or very drunk. Rather, the study says that one should drink to refresh oneself and to feel high. The Haya or Nyambo do not perceive intoxication as a means of communication with spirits or ancestors and it is an extreme insult to tell someone "watamila", you're drunk. The study says that the crucial factor demarcating the valued state of slightly altered perception and drunkenness is control of the self. To maintain self-control is a highly valued virtue, the study says. As for the economic importance, banana beer and banana gin have resulted in many people turning to laziness because of drinking and not taking time to cultivate. People say the idlest citizens (abanafu) live by banana gin. At the same time, people feel banana gin is more productive and brings quick profit because crop harvesting is slow and brings a lower profit. Rural areas are perceived as places where bananan beer and even banana gin are not adversely affected by commoditization.
In urban contexts, both banana beer and banana gin (Enkonyagi or enguli) were commonly said to be watered down to increase profits. In case of banana beer for the market care is not always taken to make certain that the proper amount of bananas and sorghum are used, resulting in poor quality taste. Banana beer is normally produced with bananas of a particular type embiile/enkundi that differ from the staple cooking banana (ekitoke). Unlike grain-based African beers, banana beer is never cooked. Bananas for beer production are ripened artificially either by hanging them above the hearth (aharutala) or by burying them in a pit for several days to transform starches into fermentable sugars the process called kwalika.
After the bananas have ripened, they are placed in a dug-out wooden (obwato) through either peeled or unpeeled and mashed by stomping. Type grasses (orushojo) are added to aid the breakdown of the bananas. After impurities are removed through the use of grass filters, enough water is added to equal the amount of juice (omulamba) obtained. Dried sorghum (omugusa) is added to the mixture, the trough is covered with banana leaves and the mixture is allowed to ferment for at least 24 hours. Among these tribes, men are responsible for producing banana beer. Although women and children may assist in various phases of production, such as collecting grass or water, women are not allowed to crush the bananas because the work is said to be particularly arduous and because the brew could be contaminated if a woman is menstruating.