Herbal Infusion · Sahel Bush Tea
Kinkeliba
Photo: T.K. Naliaka / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Though drunk every morning like tea, kinkeliba contains no caffeine at all — the leaves come from a scrubby wild shrub, not a tea plant.
Dried leaves from the wild Combretum micranthum shrub, gathered in bundles across the Sahel scrubland around Saint-Louis, are boiled into an earthy, faintly nutty infusion. Vendors sell the dried bundles bound with straw at markets, and the brewed tea itself from streetside kettles.
Why it's made this way: The shrub grows wild across the semi-arid Sahel country north of Saint-Louis, and generations of herders and farmers there have relied on it as a caffeine-free daily drink believed to aid digestion.
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