Ann,

They usually avoid it like the plague.........I doubt very much that it's burning tamboti you smelled, not only because of what it does to the stomach but also because it only occurs near watercourses and that would mean that the wood gatherers would have to carry it up more hills to get it home.

Dependant on area, they would probably burn acacia of some kind.......

Tamboti is very easy to identify. It has a darkish broken bark and if you pull a leaf off the tree it will weep white stcky sap. Other ways to identify the tree are little or nothing growing in it's shade (it changes the PH level of the surrounding soil to discourage competitive growth) and it's often been ringbarked by porcupines which are about the only animal that can eat it.........The other way is to look in the tree book!