Palaver Sauce

I wonder why our dark green sauce, spinach or kontomire, was named palaver sauce? Who named it and why? Palaver, is an issue, problem, quarrel or matter which needs resolution or arbitration. What is there to arbitrate about this tasty sauce?

Once, as a student at SMS, we set off from Kumasi to Juaben for field studies. This must have been in 1987. Our aim was to put our newly acquired skills of survey and interview to work. All day we asked quesions from house to house, from general census questions, to what people ate or drank. I wonder what our profs had promised the citizenry there to make them so happy to participate. But they did, giving us answers to everything we wanted to know. At the end of the day, one generous woman made my group of four, a meal of village style kontomire abom, which we ate with slender soft fingers of green apem plantain from her farm. It was the day Kakra described village style abom as "Creamy Kontomire!" Creamy in texture my friends, never in colour. I bet you want to know what village style abom is. It is the one reason to go visit a rural Akan village in Ghana!