The palm wine tapper is an old man who lives at the very end of a dusty and windy road. He is an ode to memories.
The palm wine tapper sings of a past webbed with uncertainties and a present that is unimpressive. Maybe he did in his past, but as we see it today, he is without sons and daughters, without a wife and without relatives. He is mysterious and he is just like a man that came with the wind.
The palm wine tapper is always in shorts and is almost always drunk. On his neck lies a rope stringed to his gourd. When he walks, his gourd motions back and forth like a pendulum.
The palm wine tapper's gourd is round and sturdy and swirls wine when he walks. Like his gourd, his wine-filled stomach is no different, it is round and sturdy. When he gets drunk, his mouth pours mirth and the history of many cultures, but he never talks about himself.
As for his past, they are filled with speculations. Some say he once had a daughter and a lovely wife. The stories have it that he was a successful professional who did well in the world of impact investing through the seventies and early eighties.
Just like every successful professional who had to be saved from the game of their profession, he was entrapped by the pursuit of success and success did he attain. He worked late nights and traveled the world attending various investment conferences. As grew as a professional, he had less and less time to spend with his daughter and wife.
On diverse occasions, he returned from his travels to hear rumours of his wife's infidelity. When this happens, he would question his wife and they often escalated into intense squabbles. She accused him of being poorly available and yet points accusing fingers of infidelity at her. She faults his lack of trust as a mirror of his own infidelity to her. The different confrontations he had with his wife took diverse turns. But in all, he couldn't get to the root of the matter because there was no substantive evidence of infidelity.
In the early eighties, when newer technologies were emerging rapidly, one such technology at a time was the newer parenthood test. Prompted by non-stop reports of his wife's infidelity, he decided to test his daughter's paternity and to his utter dismay, found that his daughter has a different dad.
A couple of days later, he found a note written by his wife detailing how he shouldn't look for her and her daughter because they've left for a different country and to the actual father of the daughter.
The speculations has it that this event was the beginning of the end for him, as he became troubled and lost himself to drunkenness. He lost his impact investing firm position and declined rapidly in his professional height, emotional stability and social relationships.
As regards other speculations of his past, some others say he was once a Catholic priest; a pious man that became a priest from an early age. He was devoted and separate from the ways of the world. He didn't smoke, he didn't drink, and he didn't cheat others. He never took the wife of another man, neither did he take a woman for himself.
The stories have it that in the early years of his priesthood, he had flair for a young fair woman who served in the same rectory that he served. Her name was Marilyn and Marilyn was a nun.
At the appearance of Marilyn, he would smile and hold a prolonged eye contact. He continually scheduled private conversations with Marilyn and would appear relaxed and happier in these conversations. He would lean over as he listens to her thoughts and initiate physical contact whilst sharing suggestive jokes and comments.
In one instance, he was reported to the local diocesan authorities for questionable interaction with a consecrated sister. Marilyn was this consecrated sister but the report was framed in a manner that excluded Marilyn's name and details. Interestingly, the authorities dismissed the suspicion because according to the verdict, he naturally exhibited great pastoral care to the all, and there was no concrete evidence of misdemeanor.
Not that he truly flouted the rules of his celibate canonical vows, but his attraction for Marilyn the nun was glaring and as the months passed by, it grew and he became less and less furtive with her.
Often, he was the sacramental minister at the confessional. He could never tell the identity of the penitent but as long as it was Marilyn and as from the moment she opened her mouth to make confessions, he always knew it was her. The bulk of Marilyn's confessions were concerning her human weakness and lustful thoughts. In the end, he would simply say, "I absolve you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. You are forgiven". He would then dismiss Marilyn.
He wasn't meant to know it was Marilyn and bound by the Seal of Confession, he never for once hinted that he knew Marilyn was at the confessional.
One day, just about when he has grown closer and closer with Marilyn and he was going to break the chord of his clerical celibacy in some romantic endeavor, he was the sacramental minister at the confession booth and there was a penitent. The situation was just as other confessions; a veil covering the penitent's face to hide the identity, the penitent entering the confessional and making a sign of the cross just as he is making a sign of the cross on the other side of the screen. The rite progressed as always but as the penitent began to make confessions, he recognized the voice. He knew it was Marilyn but her confessions took a different turn.
Beyond her usual confessions of weakness and lustful thoughts, Marilyn confessed to violating the tenets of a consecrated life as she met a man who did lewd things to her in seven encounters. She ended her confession detailing how she is now pregnant from the diverse sexual escapades and with a deep sense of shame and disappointment, she has chosen to pursue life outside the confines of her religious consecration and into the casual world of a mother.
The stories have it that he became so stunned and didn't say a word for so long until Marilyn took it upon herself to step out of the confession booth without the priest's absolution. Marilyn got out of the rectory with great remorse and led a life in the wide and open embrace of the secular world.
The stories have it that the turn of events impacted him so badly that he also got out of the rectory unceremoniously, took a secular life upon himself and ended up as a palm wine tapper from being sad and troubled from the turn of events.
In spite of these speculations, the palm wine tapper remains an old man who lives at the very end of a dusty and windy road.
Certainly, he looks like a man that has known better days. He appears as a once-polished man who knows how the world works but strangely got fraught with an ill that has plunged him into drunkenness.