Registered: 04/13/09
Posts: 12
Loc: The Netherlands
and want a good wood for fire by friction, try Vitex doniana. (Just prepare your tinder bundle a little better than I did in this rush job)
It can be found in savannah regions from South Africa to Ethiopa to Senegal (and in Gabon, where I recorded this).
The abundant, black fruits are also edible (another top tip: anything a chimpanzee eats, is also safe for us to eat) although I personally don't think it tastes like the chocolate/prune it's usually described as. The young leaves can be used as spinach as well.
There are other woods that work as well, but Vitex was the easiest I tried. The local guys were impressed that a white guy who didn't have the forest skills they did, could make a fire using sticks.
For tinder I used dry savannah grass, fluffed up bark from a few trees and the fluff from the seed pods of a member of the Malvaceae family (like capok).
The resin of very common Okoumé (Aucoumea klaineana) is known locally as torche indigène and burns very well.
a good reminder that there is a big wide world out there and while i'll never have a chance to make a fire with Vitex now i know it can be done.i wonder what the locals in Gabon would think if they saw how Birch bark burns?
Registered: 04/13/09
Posts: 12
Loc: The Netherlands
Thanks guys.
And Canoedogs: It's funny you should mention that; the local guys I worked with were also big into carving spoons (sometimes with only a bowie knife!) and so on and I told them about how birch trees can provide a safe drink, great carving wood and our equivalent to torche indigène, as well as material to build a canoe if you're lucky and skilled enough.
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