69 people reported dead in Zimbabwe after drinking local beer.

In Mozambique, it has been reported that dozens of people apparently died after drinking a traditional beer that had been laced, allegedly, with “crocodile bile.”

The story was updated this morning, confirming that 69 people have died and 196 are hospitalized after attending a funeral on Friday in the village of Chitima in the western part of the country. The mourners had gathered later in the day in a neighborhood to drink Pombe (or Phombe), a fermented mix of sorghum, bran, corn, and sugar.

The owner of the drink stand, her daughter, nephew, and four members of neighboring families were among the first seven fatalities received at the local hospital morgue on Saturday morning.

The provincial health director for Tete, Carla Mosse Lazarus, said that samples had already been sent to a national analytical laboratory to determine what poison or poisons had contaminated the 210-liter drum of the brewed beverage.

Oddly, nowhere in today’s Mozambique report is there any appearance or speculation that the toxic substance may have been “crocodile bile” or any other local names for such a poison (such as ndura). However, The New York Times cites another official, Alex Albertini, have been reported as being the source of this speculation.

Is the poison really crocodile bile?

Crocodile bile is literally the digestive juice from the gall bladders of the Nile crocodile, Crocodylus niloticus. Its use traces back to witchcraft accusations in 1899, according to Professor N.Z. Nyazema, in the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Zimbabwe, writing in theCentral African Journal of Medicine in 1984 and 1985. The university, in Harare, is about 300 miles southwest across the Mozambique border from where the poisonings occurred.

Professor Nyzema explains,

It is widely believed that the bile from the gall bladder of a crocodile is very poisonous. The bile nduru is used as poison which is added to beer or stiff porridge, sadza, of an unsuspecting victim. It is not easy to buy this poison neither is it easy for anyone to kill a crocodile solely for the purpose of obtaining the bile. But with a good fee one can obtain some of the poison from a special n’anga [a traditional healer of the Zimbabwean Shona tribe]. At times the n’anga may undertake to poison the victim thus adding mystery to the ingredients of the poison. It is reported that the poisoning occurs at special occasions like beer drinking: The nduru is said to be introduced into the beer by dipping the finger or nail where a small amount is placed: This will suffice for the purpose. The unfortunate victim is supposed to die within 24 hours. The poison is supposed to manifest itself when the patient develops pains mainly in the abdomen.

Professor Nyazema learned these stories from the writings of Professor Michael Gelfand, a South African doctor who led the department in the middle of the 20th century and wrote extensively on colonial medicine in southeastern Africa.

In the current tragedy in Mozambique, I can’t imagine just how much bile would’ve had to be added to 210 liters of brew for so many deaths to occur.

The analytical tests from this tragic episode will tell if the good professor was indeed correct about the source of this traditional poison. But the mystery may still remain: Is crocodile bile really the cause of these deaths?