Along the edges of M'Baïki's market and on the roads leading out of town, small vendors sell palm wine (vin de palme) tapped from the raphia and oil palms of the surrounding forest. It is drunk from calabashes or repurposed plastic containers, usually on the spot.
Fresh palm wine in the morning is a mild, slightly fizzy drink with natural sweetness. By midday it has begun to ferment; by late afternoon it is potent. The sellers are usually women who have collected it at dawn. It is one of the most distinctively local things you can drink in this part of the CAR — cheap, social, and deeply rooted in the everyday life of the forest zone.