Scientific name: Strychnos Coculoides
Common name: Corky Monkey Orange
We basically know two seasons in this country: summer and winter. Autumn and spring can be recognised by trees losing their leaves and flowering respectively, but summer and winter are the main seasons for Namibians. The corky monkey orange tree defies the odds of common seasonal behaviour. During a period when most trees lose their leaves, it starts to bear fruits. This neat, evergreen tree can grow up to four metres tall and has a compact canopy. It has a distinct physique, ovate leaves and green circular fruits that turn creamy yellow when ripe. It can be found in the Kavango East and Kavango West Regions, as well as some parts of the Ohangwena Region.
My friends from what was then simply known as the Kavango Region (prior to its division into two regions) introduced the monkey orange fruit to me in the early 2000s. I was a young girl – not even a teenager yet – from the Omusati Region, tasting fruits from Kavango Region in the small mining town of Rosh Pinah in the //Karas Region. I remember thinking that it was a hard ball when she handed me the fruit. “It’s ‘eguni’,” she said. That is what it is called in their local language, RuKwangali, a sublanguage spoken by the Kavango people. I was excited to taste a new fruit. Burning with curiosity, I knocked on the hard shell, hurting my knuckles as I did not expect the shell to be this hard. Actually, there was no need to knock on the fruit as it was clear that it was ripe just from looking at it. It was just an involuntary act, as knocking on fruits is a method we usually use to determine whether a fruit is ripe or not. The sounds differ as you knock, and ripe fruits have a more peak sound.
The only way we could open it was by hitting it hard with a rock and so we did. The shell broke and we carefully ensured its content did not spill over. Inside was a brownish circular ball of seeds coated with flesh puzzled together. I took a generous piece to taste … very sweet and slippery, but there was more seed than flesh. I had to try more pieces to get the full satisfaction of the taste, a memory I will remember for a lifetime.
The monkey orange fruit has many uses. The flesh can be processed to make jam and juice. I later discovered that the calabash of the monkey orange is where my late maternal grandmother stored her mixture of ochre and cattle fat, or herbs. It has only a small opening, which is closed with a stuffed cloth. These are all significant must-haves to mostly elderly women within our Aawambo culture as they often apply these to their grandchildren when meeting them for the first time. It is a symbol of strength, resilience, good luck and wealth which is used to bless them and wish them well as the eldest in the lineage. The calabash of the monkey orange fruit is strong and believed to preserve the quality of the content you store in it. Three years ago, I stored dry elephant dung in it, and taking a look at it now, it is still as fresh as it was then.
The common belief is that certain trees only grow in certain regions. However, as a plant enthusiast I have learned to unlearn. If the environment permits, plants thrive wherever it is introduced. Although I never sowed seeds of the monkey orange in the Omusati Region, I have seen it at the Ogongo Campus of the University of Namibia. This just proves again that any plant can thrive anywhere, given the right amount of the basics: the right soil type with adequate nutrients, water and sunlight.
Agnes Shekupe Shivute