This paper investigates the idea of rum as an ontology of life. More specifically, it explores the rum as metaphor in the context of Africana existential ontology. Here it is argued that rum drinking can serve as the basis for understanding and conceptualizing certain basic structures of human existence in the Caribbean mode of existence. In pursuing these tasks, ontology is not construed as the study of the kinds of entities that exist; rather, ontology is given an existential twist in (...) the sense of focusing on patterns of human existence, as well as practices that are indicative of human creative agency. (shrink)