by Jane Goodall
How ironic that these plants, used for healing during hundreds of years, should lead to so much violence, desperation, poverty, and death. And that a plant that in itself is incapable of harming people should be existing under a death sentence.
It is good news for the Andeans that President Evo Morales of Bolivia won a major victory when, in January 2013, the United Nations accepted coca-leaf chewing. Peru and Venezuela are also defending the traditional use of coca, and fighting orders from the UN’s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) to ban its cultivation and to destroy all wild plants. And it is good news also for Erythroxylum coca itself.
The Peyote Cactus—Lophophora williamsii
In 1956, during the year I spent working in London just before I went to Africa, I met an artist—a real Chelsea artist, who often wore a smock. Charles was always very neat, with artistically long hair in a pageboy bob. He confided to me that he was taking part in an “experiment” to learn about the effects of mescaline—a substance I now know is extracted from a cactus. He never told me for whom he worked. In his studio, and under supervision, he would take a dose of a specified strength, and the effect on his painting was subsequently analyzed.
He told me that once when he had been looking at a square box, it suddenly became completely flat, like a tablemat. Colors became extraordinarily vivid and intense, and he saw recurring patterns of stripes, spheres, and dots of many brilliant shades. It reminded me of a book I read by Aldous Huxley, who described what he experienced under the influence of mescaline as “animated stained glass illuminated from light coming through eyelids.”
Mescaline is a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid found in small amounts in some plants of the bean family, but mainly in several species of cactus—the San Pedro (Echinopsis pachanoi), the Peruvian Torch (E. peruviana), and especially peyote (Lophophora williamsii), which has been used by Mexico’s Native Americans in religious ceremonies for more than three thousand years.
When I was in Mexico, I was told how mescaline was extracted from the peyote cactus. First the cactus is cut down to ground level. The taproot then grows a new “head”—which is cut off and dried. I was shown one of the disk-shaped buttons. This head may be chewed, or soaked to make a drink. As it is very bitter, it is often ground into a powder and put into capsules so that you can get the effect without tasting it.
Peyote has been used medicinally in many different contexts by several Native American cultures. The Tarahumara of northwest Mexico held long-distance races from village to village, sometimes running fifty miles. They would chew peyote and rub it on their legs for the purpose of strengthening them and also protecting them from evil forces. The long-distance runners of northwest Mexico’s Tepehuán people did the same. The Kiowa people, who were indigenous to the Great Plains, used peyote to treat flu, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, and venereal diseases. And it has also been used to alleviate pain from toothache and in childbirth, and for treating skin disease, rheumatism, diabetes, and blindness.
Tobacco—Nicotiana spp.
Even though I have never smoked cigarettes, I have some very personal connections to tobacco. My first husband died of his addiction—from emphysema, which is a very unpleasant way to go. In the end he had to smoke—it made him cough and cough, the only way to rid his lungs of the nasty deposit of phlegm. Furthermore, the tobacco farming that began in Tanzania in 1984 has destroyed vast areas of open forest. To the south of Gombe I have seen the devastation, some of it in what was once prime chimpanzee habitat, and the same destruction of forests is true in other areas around the world.
The tobacco plant itself is, of course, as blameless as all the other plants in this chapter. Yet even though I know this, I somehow cannot help disliking it—the commercially grown version, that is. And it doesn’t help that this plant is in the nightshade family, since I instantly think of deadly nightshade. Poor, innocent tobacco plant—I’m sorry!
Let me hasten to add that my illogical feeling of disapproval definitely does not extend to the wild tobacco plants. Among the indigenous peoples of the Americas tobacco has, for hundreds of years, been used in sacred ceremonies—as it still is—for it is believed to have many healing properties. The natives of Central and South America sometimes used tobacco as snuff to “clear the head” or simply to chew. Of course tobacco was also smoked in elaborately decorated pipes of many sizes and shapes. It was also used as a panacea for all kinds of medical conditions, including fevers, skin burns, insect bites, “diseases of glands in the neck,” and eye soreness, and is even still used today as a paste for teeth whitening!
In North America the use of tobacco was similar. It was held sacred by many of the indigenous peoples and, in one way or another, played a role in most major life events, from birth to burial—as it does to this day. Some tribes planted it separately from other crops and there were special rituals for sowing and harvesting. It is thought to be a gift from the Creator and that the smoke takes thoughts and prayers to heaven.
An important ceremony for many North American tribes is the smoking of the peace pipe, sharing the smoke between the individual making the smoke and those receiving it. The smoking of a peace pipe would symbolically seal a treaty or pact to end war with another tribe.
Sometimes tobacco is given as an offering to Mother Earth, placed on the ground or beside sacred rocks or trees. And as we saw in the last chapter, a traditional healer may leave tobacco as an offering to the spirit of a plant before returning to take it, or part of it, for medicine.
A twist of tobacco is almost always a component of the medicine bag, a small leather pouch containing various sacred items. I have been gifted with a few of these pouches by Native American friends. I have been told that tobacco is the one object common to all medicine bags—but I cannot know for sure, because it is not permitted to look inside.
Legend has it that the very first person to bring tobacco to Europe, in 1493, was Ramón Pane, who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage. But the plant was named for Jean Nicot, a French ambassador to Portugal, who sent tobacco leaves back to the French court as medicine—and subsequently popularized it as snuff. Another story relates how Sir Walter Raleigh advocated the smoking of this “weed” in pipes in the British court. When he first began smoking, it is said that a manservant, entering the room and seeing his master wreathed in smoke, rushed for a pail of water with which he doused the unfortunate smoker! Soon, though, pipe smoking became fashionable at court—even Queen Elizabeth I was persuaded to try it.
Gradually, throughout the seventeenth century, the habit of smoking pipes spread through all of Europe. The demand increased, and this led to the proliferation of huge plantations in the southern United States.
The Arrival of “Cancer Sticks”
The commercial production of cigarettes, appropriately nicknamed “cancer sticks,” began in South America. In 1853 one Luis Susini designed a machine that could produce 3,600 “cigarets” per hour, and set up the very first factory in Cuba. By 1945 cigarettes were in mass production, with machines that could turn out eight thousand per minute. Thus the stage was set for the growth of a multibillion-dollar industry that would compromise the health of hundreds of thousands of people around the world. And, incidentally, that of the countless dogs used in unnecessary tests designed to prove that inhaled cigarette smoke can be harmful—as was abundantly clear from clinical observations of people.
Some recent statistics from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report reveal that tobacco causes more deaths each year in America than the combined deaths from motor-related injuries, murders, suicides, alcohol use, illegal drugs, and HIV infections. In fact, the CDC cites a startling statistic: each year one in every five deaths in the United States can be attributed to cigarette smoking. And, rather horribly, even the health of those who breathe in the smoke of others may be compromised.
One of the most vivid descriptions of the harmful nature of tobacco was written by Britain’s King James I in 1
604:
In my opinion there cannot be a more base, and yet hurtfull, corruption in a Countrey, then is the vile vse (or other abuse) of taking Tobacco in this Kingdome… A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse.
How ironic that Jamestown, the birthplace of the New World tobacco plantations, was named for him.
Alcohol
Alcoholic beverages can be made out of many plants, though in the Western world we are most familiar with those made from hops, grains, and grapes. In Asia rice is often used, and in Africa it is millet, bananas, and the sap of palm trees. I have tried almost all of them.
My mother, Vanne, maintained that a little drink in the evening was medicinal: after a hard day’s work it served to change the mood, enable one to relax, and clear the mind of daytime worries. She could not drink wine—it simply did not agree with her. Her “poison” was whiskey—meaning Scottish whisky, or Scotch, as Americans call it—and she liked to have, each evening, a little “tot.” That is a “shot” in America, a “wee dram” in Scotland.
So it became a tradition: wherever I was in the world, at around seven p.m., I would try to get ahold of some kind of a drink (water would do, in a pinch!) and raise my glass to Vanne and the family. Thus, over the miles, we toasted one another, and each felt better. My sister and I kept up this family tradition even after Vanne’s death. We were fantasizing one evening, Judy and I, and imagining Vanne up on some beautiful white fluffy cloud, where angels played harps and everywhere beautiful flowers bloomed.
“And I bet,” said Judy, “that if there is any whisky up there, Mum will have got ahold of a glass.” Other family members have joined Vanne on the cloud, and friends and their loved ones, and of course my dog Rusty and my chimpanzee friend David Greybeard. And so, with a growing number of people around the world, I raise my glass each evening in a toast to “The Cloud Contingent.” Silly, perhaps, but somehow immensely comforting.
As for the therapeutic value of the little drink in the evening, several scientific studies have shown that people who drink lightly live longer than those who do not drink at all. The problem is that sometimes when people are under stress, one drink doesn’t do the trick. Better have another. Maybe the worries are still there, so why not a third? This is the path to alcoholism. And, alas, addiction to alcohol is only too common.
The Grapevine
At one time there were two large glass conservatories attached to the back of The Birches, leading onto the garden. One of them was a place to sit where all the sun’s rays were captured through walls and roof so that it was warm in winter. The other served as a sort of greenhouse—festooned with Uncle Eric’s grapevine. Alas, the grapes never developed into juicy, delicious fruits, but remained small, undeveloped, and far too sour to eat.
When bombs fell close by during World War II, the glass was cracked, and sadly both conservatories had to be dismantled. But Judy has planted a new grapevine, in memory of Uncle Eric. It is an outdoor plant and obtains its nourishment not from the poor Birches soil but from a richer and more suitable soil imported and placed in a tub. It is three years old now, and last year, Judy says, the fruits were large and sweet.
We know that wine was made in ancient Egypt—there are hieroglyphics that record the cultivation of the grape there. And the ancient Greeks, Phoenicians, and Romans all grew vines and drank wine. From there the cultivation of the grape spread throughout Europe. Grapes can be black, purple, crimson, dark blue, yellow, green, orange, or pink. They have been cultivated for winemaking all over the world where the conditions are right—they need warm, sunny days for the ripening, and sharp frosts in winter.
Until quite recently the wine snobs believed that the only wine worth drinking came from French vineyards. Gradually, though, the vineyards of other countries have built up their own reputations. The first sustainable vineyard in California was planted at a mission under the direction of the Franciscan Father Junípero Serra. Subsequently he established seven others at different missions, and became known as the Father of California Wine.
There are many species of grapes of the Vitis genus across North America, most of which, until recently, were not considered suitable for wine. But today many of these grapes are grown for wine throughout the United States.
Tanzania has been making efforts to cultivate grapes for good wine in the Dodoma region for many years. Benedictine monks were producing Bihawana wine by the 1970s. Derek and I used to buy it sometimes—it was more like port, but very good. But the Dodoma wines grown in the same region (both red and white) were hit-or-miss affairs. Sometimes one was lucky, but some bottles actually gave people hallucinations—and terrible hangovers. Perhaps the menu at a safari lodge, sometime in the seventies, sums it up best: “This Dodoma wine has all the subtlety of a charging rhino.” I am still puzzling about the meaning. And no—I did not try it! More recently Cetewico, another brand from the same region, has come onto the market and is apparently very good. I shall have to buy some and try for myself.
Hops—Humulus lupulus
My father didn’t really like wine, and he hated spirits—his drink was “bitter,” the English term for pale ale. He taught me to appreciate the British way of pouring the beer that resulted in a big “head” of foam. In 1956 I worked as a waitress at the Hawthorns Hotel in Bournemouth in order to save money for my fare to Africa. The doorman always used to offer me the opportunity to suck up this foam from the top of his lunchtime pint. I didn’t actually like it much, but never had the heart to tell him.
The British like their beer room temperature. My second husband, Derek, hated the American custom of cold beer and used to ask his host to warm it in the microwave!
Malt is an important ingredient in most beers, with the female flower clusters of hops (a member of the cannabis family) being an essential component. Hops are herbaceous perennial plants native to the Northern Hemisphere. Whenever I went to stay with a friend in Kent during my summer holidays, I used to pass field after field of hops, rows and rows of plants trained to climb posts and grow along rope lattices in precise green lines. In the autumn the plants retreat into rhizomes.
Hops originated in China, where they may have first been cultivated. In the eighth and ninth centuries AD they were being grown in Bavaria and other parts of Europe. The first documented use of the plant as a “bittering” agent in the making of beer is in the eleventh century—before the use of the hop, breweries used other plants, such as dandelions, burdock root, marigold, and heather, to counteract the sweetness of the malt.
Homemade Beverages
I used to stay with a friend in Kigoma who bought grapes grown around Dodoma in Tanzania, and fermented them in huge barrels in the guest room. I would hear strange noises of bubbling—rather like Macbeth’s witches—“bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.” I don’t remember, though, ever tasting the wine that resulted! Dodoma grapes are tiny, with a skin that is dark purple, very thick, and very sour—so I always bite a hole in it first and squish the fruit out into my mouth. The flesh itself is sweet and delicious, but it has very, very many seeds.
Of course, all kinds of other plants are used in East Africa to make alcoholic drinks, or “pombe”—it depends on the area and what grows there. In some places pombe is made from millet seeds. In the villages around Gombe in the Kigoma region of Tanzania, one kind of small, very sweet banana is the preferred ingredient—the fruits are fermented in great pits. And when I first arrived in Kenya back in 1957, the staff on my friend’s farm would make a potent brew from wheat, which was placed to ferment in bottles in the heat of the hay in the barn. Unfortunately, the brew sometimes overheated and exploded. If anyone heard it, the guys were in trouble, for making pombe was strictly illegal in those days. And I used to worry that the horses might swallow slivers of glass.
In many parts of Central and West Africa the local drink o
f choice is palm wine. This is often made from the wild date palm, but also from the fermented sap of the coconut palm—sap was taken from trees in our garden in Dar es Salaam for this purpose. And in the Republic of the Congo, where JGI has a sanctuary for orphan chimpanzees, it is made from the fermented sap of the oil palm.
As in all the African countries where we seek to conserve chimpanzees and their forests, it is important to improve the standard of living of villagers in the area and encourage them to start environmentally sustainable projects. And sometimes—as when we opened a small schoolroom in the village of Mpili—we join the villagers for a celebration. On that occasion everyone gathered together in a large clearing, the elders and “VIPs” sitting on benches under a thatched awning.
I was there with JGI project manager Victor de la Torre Sans and we sat, glasses of palm wine in hand, awaiting some words from the chief. He made a short speech thanking us for our contribution. I made a short speech thanking them for all their help. And then, very solemnly and before drinking, we poured a few drops of our palm wine onto the ground—for the ancestors. After that the party began. I had been warned that I would not like the local brew, but I found it quite delicious.