A pot of malwa and drinking straws. PHOTO | TONY MUSHOBOROZI
The old brewer brought a jar full of malwa. She poured it in the pot, rushed away, returned with a small bucket of hot water and poured it into the pot. Now we had at least six litres of hot alcohol. Yes, malwa is consumed hot because of the hot water they keep adding. But malwa comes in such large quantities that you often get full before you get tipsy. And that is what happened that evening.
I recently got an opportunity to travel across the country for a side hustle. The trip that lasted a month, covered all the five regions; west, West Nile, north, east, and central. It just low-key occurred to me that there is no region referred to as ‘the south’ in Uganda. Which is weird because while Lake Victoria covers the south, there are Ugandans who live in the islands of this great lake. Anyway, back to the trip.
Being spontaneous, adventurous and possessing a sweet tooth for all manner of brews, I decided to seek the brown stuff in every area I stayed just to earn my pips as a serious reporter. Ahem. I will now report my findings so that you do not have to find out for yourself unless you have to. Because it can be a tedious job on so many levels.
West Nile - Malwa
Let us get this strange fact out of the way before we dive into my experience of drinking malwa in West Nile. Why is Adjumani, which clearly lies east of the Nile, part of the West Nile region? Anyone knows why? No? Okay.
I arrived in Adjumani on a Saturday afternoon thinking about a friend who relocated there to work for one of the mega NGOs in the district. She hails from Adjumani Town, so relocating there from Kampala was really a homecoming for her. She had mentioned to me in the past that she was an expert malwa brewer, and that the skill had gotten her through joblessness alive and well.
Malwa is an opaque beer, whitish-brownish in colour, that is made out of millet flour. Malwa is a communal drink. It is usually served in a burnished clay pot with protruding long straws that connect to several people seated around it. The straws serve two purposes. Because malwa is crude and hard, the straw works as a filter that separates the liquid from the flour on one hand, and as a delivery instrument on the other.
However, in West Nile, I found out that one doesn’t have to drink malwa communally if one doesn’t want to. You can order it already filtered so that it needs no straw to filter it or to deliver it to your palate. Once the malwa is filtered, you can drink it the same way one drinks banana beer; from a mug or a bottle.
The two options were on the table when a friend and I entered the malwa joint in the heart of Adjumani Town. I insisted on the pot option. I wanted the full adventure. The old brewer brought a jug full of the good stuff. She poured it in the pot. She rushed away and came back with a small bucket of hot water and poured it into the pot. Now we had at least six litres of hot alcohol. Yes, malwa is consumed hot because of the hot water they keep adding.
But malwa comes in such large quantities that you often get full before you get tipsy. And that is what happened that evening. I wasn’t keen on finishing the whole six litres. We were both poor malwa drinkers, as it turned out. So we left before they could even add another bucket of hot water into our pot. We paid and walked out as dusk was setting in.
I know you will not believe this next part, but about 10 minutes later, my friend vomited on the side of the road. It was not out of drunkenness because she was not even tipsy. She attributed the hull to the drink being unsanitary.
This came as a shock to me since she is the one who had chosen the best brewer to visit. Interestingly, I was feeling completely wholesome without the slightest nausea. My marabou-stock stomach had contained another questionable drink yet again and I was pleased for it. But I was about to get a rude awakening in Moroto Town.
