It wasn’t the sake: a number of members of the Wadomo tribe that lives in the Zambeze Valley in Zimbabwe (which was what Rhodesia became but my father’s military service was over by then… and there’s another tribe in Botswana with the same condition, as well as a few random people elsewhere) have some weird mutation that gives them two (okay, not 4, but rather 2) toes. Which actually look like they are designed for tree climbing if you squint and are a confused British soldier, I suppose.
Pictures online if you google Wadomo enough, I suppose. I found some, anyway.