Adamou Idé is to thank for my recent foray into one of
Niamey’s red light districts. I was reading a short
story from the Nigerien author's Misères et grandeurs ordinaires when I came across a line about getting drunk from “chapalo sold on the
sly.” Throw together a mysterious food item with a catchy name and the phrase
“on the sly” and you are guaranteed to pique my curiosity.
Paulina, font of all Nigerien knowledge, doubled over with
laughter when I asked her to tell me about chapalo. She found it thoroughly
amusing that I even knew about the stuff and was happy to tell me all about it.
Chapalo is a type of traditional beer that is brewed in many West African
countries. It is especially popular in Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte
d’Ivoire, and Mali. Although you can find it in Niger, it is usually produced
and consumed by Togolese, Beninese, and Burkinabé immigrants living in pockets
around the capital city, making it a popular target for conservative Muslims
who view it as haram, or dirty and
strictly forbidden. By the end of our conversation, my gardener had joined in
as well. Both he and Paulina agreed that the best chapalo comes from Burkina
Faso in terms of flavor and quality. So of course, my next question was, “where
do you get it?”
 |
The Burkinabé chapalo “cabaret” is tucked down the narrow
alleyways of a residential neighborhood most non-residents would never even
notice. From the outside, it looks like any other housing compound fenced in
with straw mats tied between stripped tree branches. But once you walk through
the corrugated tin door of the establishment, you realize that this place is
different. Four large black cauldrons bubbling over hot, wood fires stand in
the center of an open-air courtyard littered with large pans, coals, and yellow
calabash bowls. A stout woman with her head tied up in a scarf stands watch
over the scene. She is introduced to me as the chapalo brew master and
proprietress of the cabaret. All Burkinabé chapalo is made by women, who learn
the art from their mothers.
The woman explained to me that her chapalo is made from red millet, but that it can also be made of sorghum, or a combination of both.
First, she washes the millet in large buckets of distilled water kept in clean,
plastic garbage cans before transferring the grain to the cauldrons. These are
covered and left to boil for two days, after which the contents are strained
through a large, loosely woven basket into a wide, shallow pan.
Once the
honey-brown liquid is collected, the pan is placed in the shade of a straw mat
hangar that also serves as a bar. Yeast is added, and the chapalo is allowed to
cool and ferment for one day before it is poured into old (but thoroughly
washed) paint buckets from which the woman’s daughter serves the fresh brew. She uses a half-liter glass juice bottle to measure out the beer into small
calabash bowls (150 CFA). For those who want their chapalo to go, she fills up
whatever receptacle the customer brings - usually the ubiquitous liter-and-a-half
Telwa or Rharhous water bottle (450 CFA). 
The clientele on this sleepy afternoon include students from
the local university discussing a text they are leafing through, a group of
cloudy-eyed old men speaking in a language that is clearly not Hausa or Zarma,
a businessman in a tie reading the paper, and some women who work as
housekeepers. Children run in and out of the dappled shade of the bar, stealing
a sip here and there from customers who are generous enough to share what is in
their bowl. The Burkinabé believe that chapalo is good for the health and begin
giving it to their children from a young age. Everyone is either holding their
calabash bowl or letting it rest on a hand-made tripod of thin, twisted rebar
kept near their feet.
After paying for my liter-and-a-half, I took my fresh find
home and shared it with friends, who said they would not trade the popular
commercial Flag beer for the sour, grainy flavor of home-made chapalo. Not
wanting it to go to waste, I combed through my cookbooks and came across Carbonnades à la flamande, by Julia Child. Having been
raised on beer stews, I couldn’t resist the idea of combining French/Belgian
cuisine and traditional West African beer. Served alongside a frosty glass of
chapalo, the stew and the beer were a success! So much so, that I went back to
get more chapalo…
This time, I went a little later in the day, more towards
early evening than late afternoon. The crowd at the chapalo cabaret had clearly
turned from the family friendly daytime group into a very male-dominated evening
crowd who stared at me as I waltzed through the door. The warm, welcoming
atmosphere in which I had been introduced to chapalo was replaced by a
steely-eyed coldness that clearly told me to buy my chapalo and get out. On my
way out the door, I noticed that the street was littered with used condoms.
The culture that surrounds chapalo is multifaceted. While it
is a drink that is enjoyed by family members and close friends at a
neighborhood “pub” where kids run around and play while adults share stories
with whoever happens to drop in (including me), it is also a
drink that is associated with prostitutes and having fun in the shadowy
folds of the night – a side they don’t want to share with outsiders, much less
curious foreign women.
So,
curious (but not foolhardy) foreign woman that I am, I will settle for
returning to my Adamou Idé novels and his characters, like those in Camisole de Paille, to better understand the world of
those men and women of the night whose lives are obscured by the darkness and straw
walls of the Niamey chapalo cabarets.
