{UAH} What a confused Article - Tonto, Omuramba, Mwenge "Umwengye"
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Publish Date: Nov 22, 2014
Saturday Vision
By Christoper Bendana
Who ever imagined that one day, in western Uganda, Christmas would come and go without tonto in every home? Today, brewing the banana beer is not one of the activities that many homes are planning for Christmas.
Christmas fanfare has changed. Tonto, which used to be the main alcohol for the western and central regions of Uganda, dropped off the list of constant guests.
Next month, many homes will have no drop of tonto to talk about.
Tonto, which was a favourite drink for many back in the day, is missing in homes, bars, menus, priotities, parties and, even vocabulary.
It has been replaced by waragi, a local gin made from distilled tonto, packed liquors and bottled beer. Tonto has been a traditional drink for over 13 million people of western and central Uganda.
Its non-negotiable presence at weddings, cultural rituals, rites of passage, and other celebrations like Christmas made it the drink of the occasion.
Tonto was sought during merrymaking and grieving, official and private ceremonies, by young and old, male and female, as well as the poor and the rich.
Today, alas, not anymore. It is scarce and expensive. Even in many rural areas, it is much easier to get a soda or a bottle of beer than tonto.
Instead, waragi has taken over as the baseline liquor for low income earners. In the good-old days, my late grandfather, Festo Kasenene, brewed tonto every month. We would stock it in calabashes and it would last for weeks.
Whenever he brewed, fellow villagers would expect a free pot of about 30 litres in what Banyankole called entereko (free get-together merrymaking).
Neighbours would gather at his compound, drink and sing from late afternoon till nightfall. He would also send some tonto to his friends who also sent him some when they brewed. The remaining would be sold and the balance (what would be left) preserved for the family consumption till the next brewing.
Stephen Rwomushana, a banana farmer in Buyeje, Rubindi remembers the entereko. The big clay pot or big calabash (ekisisi) was usually put in the middle and everyone took turns to drink from it using one straw as a gesture of unity as they deliberated on the communities' affairs.
Scarcity of tonto
Tonto used to be everywhere. But now, you can only find it in just a few bars.
Beer bananas are left to ripen before extracting the juice
In Mbarara (western Uganda), which used to be a lucrative destination for tonto brewers, you can hardly get good tonto. In Kakoba, Mbarara, Semwogerere's joint was well known for selling tonto. But not anymore.
"The quality of tonto is poor these days," says one of the revelers at the joint, before adding: "Remember the sorghum gardens we used to see in the 1990s from Ruti up to Itojo?"
Ruti is about 3km from Mbarara town while Itojo is about 50km to Ntungamo.
Why it is dying out
According to Rwomushana, the brewing process is laborious, time consuming and the proceeds (gains) from tonto do not justify the week-long process.
Tonto is made by ripening bananas in a pit for seven days. The juice is then extracted, filtered and diluted before being mixed with ground and roasted sorghum. This mixture is fermented for one to two days to produce tonto with an alcohol content ranging from 6% – 11%.
To get waragi, six jerrycans of tonto are distilled in a drum to get one jerrycan of waragi. To get a better class of waragi, the jerrycan of waragi is again mixed with five of tonto and redistilled to get one of super waragi.
Change of process
Savino Tamwesigire, a tonto brewer in Nyakatokye, Rubindi, Mbarara says when you use the traditional method of brewing tonto and distilling it into waragi, you need to sell waragi at a higher price.
Brewers who are not aiming at quality tonto have discovered that you can cut the costs of production by changing the process and still get equally good waragi, if not better.
A man extracting juice from the ripe sour banana which is mixed with roasted sorghum to ferment into tonto
The brewing of tonto has changed and it no longer aims at quality tonto for drinking but a raw material for distilling waragi.
Brewers no longer dilute banana juice before fermentation. It does not yield tonto for drinking but a thicker tonto for distilling into waragi. It cuts out the cost of water, time and utensils.
He adds that tonto is now brewed indoors in huge drums. Fermentation of banana juice is better done in drums for a week to get better.
Bottled tonto
Perhaps, new developments may give tonto its lifeline hope. Some companies have started bottling tonto and it is on sale at some supermarkets.
Commercialisation of matooke
Rwomushana, who trained as an agriculturalist at Nyaruzinga, Bushenyi in the 1960s, explains that the high demand for matooke, which is a staple food in the region and has high demand in urban areas, took over the attention of farmers.
He reveals that many people, including himself, have in the last 10 years been uprooting the sour type of banana and replacing them with matooke for food.
"People now say the sour banana is useless. They get more from the food banana than the one for brewing tonto," Rwomushana explains.
"But I call upon my fellow farmers to desist from destroying the beer banana.
Without it, the plantation withers. It's like a man in a group of women."
Commercialisation of matooke has killed the sour banana for tonto
Banana plant breeders also say the beer banana is not easily attacked by diseases like banana bacteria wilt.
However, Dr. Amos Busingye, a medical doctor in Ibanda, says the expunging of the sour banana has more reasons than money.
"For me, it is due to my faith. I am a canon in the church. I cannot grow bananas for beer," says Busingye who has about 20 acres of banana plantation spread in Ibanda and Kamwenge districts with no single beer banana.
The economics of tonto
Tamwesigire says selling waragi is more lucrative than selling tonto.
"Using the traditional method, from 30 bunches of sour bananas, you get 30, 20-litre jerrycans of tonto. At sh10,000 per jerrycan, you get sh300,000 from the whole brewing process. If you use the traditional distilling process, the same 30 bunches can yield three jerrycans of waragi.
"At 120,000 per jerrycan, you get sh360,000. But you incur more costs like sh10,000 for labour, sh10,000 for water, and sh10,000 for firewood."
However, with the new style of distilling, tonto is thick but left to ferment for more days in order to get more waragi per number of tonto jerrycans.
They do not need a lot of sorghum. And the byproducts of the process make manure. Distillers also earn more by cutting costs, time and utensils.
As a result, there is more waragi than tonto on the market. Waragi has a limitless shelf-life while tonto sours up with time and in fact becomes too sour after a week.
And the demand for waragi is higher than that of tonto.
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