The 8th Wonder Of Africa

By Okechukwu Okugo

The nature of an African is strong and while this may not be a kind of adaptation to their environment; it seems from the onset, Africans believed in accomplishing tasks manually.
Irrespective of the fact that technology has advanced alongside medicine and health care today, one could have wondered how did the African forefathers got the strength to stay very healthy, to manage big heads of farmland and maintained their very large family?

In those days an African man's wealth was measured in how large the family was. Therefore some of the extremely wealthy ones would be having as many as 50 wives or more and in some cases lost count of their children.
Only paupers had one wife.
The secret of their strength lies in the local gin distilled by the people.
This local gin has various names by which the people call it. For example, Nigerians call it Ogogoro, Kai-kai, Kinkana, Kparaga, Ufofob (Calabar), Craze man in the bottle etc.

It has been a standard practice for African forefathers to soak herbs, medicinal spices, nuts, plant leaves etc in gin and then taking them little by little in small shots, early in the morning, in the evening, night or even in the afternoon; any time the drinker wishes.

Things like the leaves of Neem tree popularly called Dogon Yaro by Nigerians, Negro or Ethiopian pepper (called Uda by Igbo, Eeru alamo by Yoruba and Chimba by Hausa); the West African pepper botanically known as Piper Guinenses (or Uziza by Igbos); ginger, garlic, wonderful kola known botanically as buchholzia, lime etc., are some of the stuffs soaked in local African gin and drank.

One who does not know the medicinal values of those things listed here tends to underestimate the efficacy of this kind of tonic.
But doubts tend to be curbed when they learn that something like the wonderful kola are used in curing 24 ailments; things like:
hypertension, memory improvement, urinary tract infection, venereal diseases, dysentery, headache, pile, irregular mensuration, waist pain, chest pain, rheumatism, premature aging, congestive heart failure etc., are cured with wonderful kola

Whereas the Neem tree or Dogon Yaro has been known to contain birth control agents and very efficacious in curing malaria. Botanically called Azadirachta indica.

Then the Ethiopian pepper, Xylopia Aethiopi, Uda, is a powerful natural contraceptive without any side effects.

That of Piper Guinenses, or West African pepper takes care of allergy, running nose, keeps the body warm and prevents cold.


Ethiopian pepper                                                                                    Neem tree flowers and leaves

West African pepper




Wonderful Kola


Many other plant roots and stem are also soaked in gin and drank.

And as it is taken so it gradually passes down the various health benefits to its drinker; becoming an African wonder since those forefathers were not known to suffer most commonly the prevalent diseases we have now -cancer, diabetes etc. -and from which they drew the strength to maintaining their physically demanding lifestyle.