Mto wa Mbu, Part 2

I'm safely back home now, but I have fallen pretty behind on my blog, so I'll just finish posting from the states.

My second day in Mto wa Mbu, I went on a village tour through their cultural tourism program. Mto wa Mbu was originally created as an "ujamaa" village in the 60's to create Tanzanian national unity, and it still has populations representing all 120+ tribes of Tanzania. My guide, Juma, was from the Chagga tribe and most of my tour was focused on them. A large part of Chagga culture is based on bananas. In Mto wa Mbu, they grow over 30 varieties of bananas, with three main purposes: to eat as fruit, to cook, and to make banana beer. We visited both the fields where the bananas are grown, and a local "brewery." The process mostly comprises of boiling the bananas, letting them ferment, and adding ground millet.

 Banana beer and its ingredients

The beer is drank socially, with several people sitting in a circle and passing around a liter (or several) of the banana beer. Some of the remaining millet floats to the top, and you have to blow it away before you drink from the container. The beer plays a big part in their lives, with many liters being used as a payment in return for favors and hundreds of liters used for wedding dowries and to settle disputes. Juma and I had some of the beer- it tasted quite interesting, with only a slight banana flavor. We had a really big container set out for us, but I was thankful that we didn't have more than a few sips each.

Fermenting banana beer... Mmm

During the rest of the day, we also visited rice fields, "Baobab Hill," and a family of the Makonde tribe that make the famous wooden carvings that are found all over Tanzania. It was a very fun and long day, that only got longer as I arranged to travel to Engaruka that night.