Shots with the king

Barefoot, I follow my host father and his brother into the dark room. The king is sitting directly next to the door. The first thing he says to us is to greet me by the local language term for a white person.

I kneel, and he blesses me by lightly brushing my head with a bundle of what looks like blonde horse’s hair.

This is our king’s first day at work. The previous one died before I moved to the area, and tradition dictates that the son appointed the new king must stay apart from the public in his house for six months before being presented to the public as our new monarch.

He addresses me in French, and I am momentarily thrown. The past four-hour ceremony had been conducted in Ife, which meant I spent a majority of it daydreaming and hoping I wasn’t committing a grave cultural mistake.

We chat for a moment before he turns to a man standing next to him and instructs him to offer me a shot of sodabe, a liquor made from palm that is basically the moonshine of Benin. There is good sodabe, there is bad sodabe and there is sodabe that will make you go blind.

I have already declined a shot at lunch today, but I don’t want the biggest news of the day to be the American who couldn’t handle sodabe.

It tastes like isopropyl alcohol going down, proving that just because you’re the king doesn’t mean your booze is good.