Just when I think that I know it all, I usually find that I’m the last one to learn something interesting that everybody else has known forever.

Yesterday, Juli, our haus meri of more than twenty-four years, was creating a truly horrible stench in the kitchen. I soon discovered that the muddy looking yellow fluid in a mixing bowl was the source of the excruciatingly foul odor.

In a moment of profound stupidity I stuck my generously proportioned nose over the bowl and had a good sniff. I like to think of myself as a sort of rugged guy, but I honestly thought I might faint. Man, that stuff stinks!

She pointed out the kitchen door to a small shiny-leaved tree that I had been intending to ask her to cut down (blocking my view) and said, in her economical way, “Noni“.

So that’s what that thing is, I thought. I’ve written previously about the Ant-Eating Aliens that I believed had infested this plant. I have erred occasionally concerning alien infestations – perhaps I was mistaken in this case also.

It seems that no aliens are involved (in this case). The noni only stinks like an alien corpse.

The taxonomic term is Morinda citrifolia. In PNG it is called noni in Tok Pisin. Other names are: Great morinda, Indian mulberry, Beach mulberry, and Tahitian Noni. More spectacularly it is, in some places, called the cheese fruit or the vomit fruit. Personally, I am going for the vomit fruit nomenclature. Here’s a photo: 

The noni is quite nutritious, if you can get around the poisonous aroma. It has carbohydrates, dietary fibre, protein, and is low in fats. It contains about one half of the vitamin C of a navel orange. It is, in fact, roughly the nutritional equivalent of an orange.

My only question is, if a single orange were available on the entire planet, why, oh why would anyone in their right mind decide to eat a noni? I guess not everybody has the same choices that I have. I can afford an orange.

As to the why of it, there are many uses in folk medicine for the noni. Juli told me that the juice sells briskly at the market as a kus remedy. (For non-Pidgin speakers – kus is a general Tok Pisin term for any upper respiratory problem.) Sadly, there are no scientifically proven medically effective uses for noni.

Here’s Juli proudly showing her noni tree and the evil smelling concoction that she will soon be drinking for her kus. I’m going to send her off the doctor tomorrow:

So, just one question remains.

Why is it that the most evil tasting, vile smelling natural substances on the earth are the ones most likely to be judged by shamans, witch doctors, herbal healing experts, and so forth to be beneficial to one’s health or able to heal one’s sickness? I don’t get it.

When I was a kid, I really hated being sick. It wasn’t so much feeling bad or suffering pain that bothered me. It was the horrible substances that I was forced to swallow which were supposed to make me better.

I promise you. If I get sick and somebody says, authoritatively, that noni will fix me up . . .

I’ll suffer in silence.

No related posts.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 09:00 and is filed under Humor, Mixed Nuts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.