Where youths smoke bhang to keep evil spirits at bay

The battle against use of bhang among the Taita is losing ground due to certain beliefs about the powers of the weed.

Apparently, Taita residents believe that the cultivation, marketing and consumption of bhang wards off evil spirits among the community.

This belief is hampering the fight against the illicit trade and increasing the number of bhang traffickers in the larger Taita to an alarming level. A number of consumers of this drug have been turned into zombies.

After intensified crackdown against the dealers by security agencies, trafficking in the forbidden crop has taken a different turn, with more women dealing in the weed.

The women have employed innovative ways of evading detection by stuffing the packed stones wrapped with banana fibre into sacks carrying omena fish, thus taking advantage of the strong smell of fish to confuse their trackers.

Some have gone a notch higher by stuffing it in the middle of bags carrying cereals and bananas, taking advantage of the weight of the cargo to escape police inspection on road check points.

Coastal towns

A bigger quantity of bhang is trafficked to Malindi and other Coastal towns from Taveta through public service vehicles.

Mwatate acts as the distribution centre where those involved in the trade supply it to their clients in other parts of the district, including Wundanyi and Voi.

Smoking of bhang is gradually taking root among students and youth in the rural areas because of belief that it has power to exorcise ghosts.

Others claim that when grown with other crops, it acts as a pesticide and prevents them from invasion by destructive pests — a claim politicians, religious leaders and administrators have dismissed as a mere ploy to justify farming the crop.

The belief is gradually taking root and drawing followers among the youthful generation who claim that it stimulates and broadens their thinking capacity.

The dramatic change in the way the drug is trafficked and stored has put the probation department and courts between a rock and a hard place when it comes to making decisions on the kind of sentences to be handed to the suspects.

A source from the probation department revealed that some of those who trade in bhang were single mothers of very young children who cannot support themselves while some were HIV positive.

“Handing custodial sentence to a HIV positive person or a mother of four or five small children would be not only dangerous to the family, but also to the inmates,” the source said.

What we have discovered is that some of them have invented a new way of storing the drugs underground on road sides where no one would suspect.

“These are women who dress so well that no one could suspect them of anything particularly when making deliveries to her retailers,” the source said.

But a number of people have dismissed these suspicions.

Ploy by dealers

A former assistant minister in the Office of the President, Mr Boniface Mganga, said the perception that the potent crop acts as pesticide is ridiculous.

“At my age I have never heard of that and that is just a ploy by the dealers and consumers to justify their evil deeds,” he said.

The former Voi MP said that the unfounded belief is aimed at glorifying the use of the crop to destroy the future of the youth.

He said that in his village, many people have become zombies after smoking bhang and cannot do anything constructive.

Mr Mganga’s remarks come at a time when the Taita District Probation Case Committee is devising ways of dealing with the menace. This is after a 16-year-old boy was placed on probation for three years for cultivating seven plants of bhang after a friend convinced him that the forbidden crop could repel troublesome weeds in the farm.

The former MP said the government has an obligation to ensure no one is allowed to cultivate bhang.

He, however, appealed to the East African Community member states to harmonise their laws to avert conflict of interest across the borders.

In Tanzania, for example, smoking bhang is not illegal while chewing khat (miraa) attracts a life imprisonment unlike Kenya where it is the opposite. In Kenya chewing of miraa is legal.

A local Anglican priest Silvanus Mwakoma said ghosts cannot be exorcised by smoking bhang.

The insecurity problem in the country is caused by criminals who smoke the drug and have nothing constructive to do.

However, Taita senior district officer, Mrs Abdulatif Muzne, said the government will not relent in its efforts in the fight against cultivation, marketing and consumption of bhang in the area.

She said it does not matter what value it could be having in terms of driving out demons, warding off troublesome weeds in farms or whatever its commercial and social use. Dealers and consumers must face the law, she said.

In Taita, the areas most notorious in the drug trade include Masumbesunyi, Mwanguwi, Kitukunyi, Wasinyi and Kungu.

Wines and spirits outlets in both Wundanyi and Mwatate are used as distribution points. Other areas where the drug is highly consumed and sold include Kariobangi, Peleleza, Sisal estate and Kambi ya Punda in Mwatate.