Issue 08
CHEWING MAIRUNGI IN UGANDA
By Matt Kettmann
It’s 2 p.m. on a Sunday in Mbale, a dusty town of 70,000 in eastern Uganda that lies beneath the sharply dropping slopes of Mt. Elgon. On Cathedral Road, the town’s main drag, where racing scooters and bicycle taxis battle trucks overloaded with people and bags of grain, there’s a line of seated men forming a few feet from the entrance to Nurali’s, a tasty Indian restaurant that doubles as the bar for the tourist-friendly New Mt. Elgon View Hotel.
In most parts of Uganda it’s a day for church and chores, but for this long lineup of able-bodied Mbale men it’s just another afternoon to waste away with conversation and mastication. All of them, from teenagers to septuagenarians, are chewing on a bright, green leaf, talking ecstatically, and smiling, which—in a depressed country ruled by unemployment, tarnished by war, and lacking much hope—can be a rare expression. This is the daily happy hour for the men of Mbale, but rather than cocktails and pints of ale their drug of choice is mairungi, a relatively mild but highly addictive heartpumping stimulant that’s forbidden throughout most of the world.
Better known to the rest of the world as khat and to scientists as Catha edulis, mairungi is legal in Uganda, but it’s not the national addiction it is in places like Somalia and Yemen, where upwards of 60 percent of the men chew it daily and late into the night. It is, however, a growing trade and hobby in Uganda, according to government tallies, and the streets of Mbale in particular are home to some of the country’s most rabid chewers. Indeed, other than out-of-the-way pockets in Kampala, the capital, Mbale is the only large town in Uganda where crowds gather in public every afternoon for the daily ritual.
That’s because the thousands-year-old practice of chewing mairungi (which predates coffee) originated in the Horn of Africa, directly northeast of Mbale. Generally considered to consist of Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, and Eritrea, the Horn’s traditions also influence Kenya, which lies right on the other side of Mt. Elgon. The drug’s popularity in Mbale results from this proximity to the Kenyan border, a proximity that has also contributed to Mbale’s reputation as the best place to buy cheap goods smuggled in from Kenya. The illicit smuggling has fueled the legal mairungi-chewing trend over the past two decades.
These days, however, the bulk of Mbale’s daily stash is trucked in every morning on a four-hour-plus drive from Kampala, wrapped in banana leaves by the folks who grow it on the jungled hills southwest of the capital. It also grows naturally in forests throughout equatorial Uganda, so another common, though less desirable, source is the people who harvest the wild leaves and then sell them on the streets at a reduced rate.
But whatever the source, mairungi is so prevalent in Mbale that it’s being sold just steps from the central bus station, from black plastic bags that, to the untrained eye, appear to be stuffed with broad-leaved basil. By mid-afternoon, the lips and remaining teeth of every fourth man or so are stained a frothy green, their hands constantly fingering the next leaf. On every block throughout town the sales continue, as a mixture of mostly native Ugandans and a few turban-wearing Arabs sit on the sidewalks with plastic bags and banana leaves before them, each overflowing with carefully selected shrubbery of different strains and strengths. Amid vendors of flip-flops, eggs, dried vegetables, and school supplies, mairungi thrives as the most bustling sidewalk business in Mbale, with the selling of bubble gum—used by the mairungi chewers to cut the bitter taste and form solid wads—a close second.
At first glance, the men munching on the green gobs seem sinister, their eyes slightly glossed, their smiles rather smirked, their glances at passing girls certainly malicious. They are, of course, selling and buying drugs, and although this particular leaf is legal, there’s an aura of impropriety, especially in Uganda, where Christian morals dominate the minds and manners of its citizens. With the West-leaning government openly taking note of mairungi’s popularity, this will likely be one of the last generations to chew the leaf freely. As such, they walk a fine line, one foot firmly on the sidewalk of legality, the other dangling deep in the overflowing bag of public intoxication.
But all it takes to break the ice with these wild-eyed men is partaking in their daily ritual. So that’s what I did when I wandered out of the New Mt. Elgon View Hotel one afternoon back in late February, stopping at the first open bag I saw and buying from a surprisingly young boy, for less than one dollar, a small bag of leaves. I also paid a few cents more for a stick of murando, a root that’s chewed with the leaves to release more of the stimulating characteristics. Many solicitations later, I approached a man who looked to be in his late 20s—about my age—and showed him that I’d already purchased some.
“No, no,” he laughed, the men next to him also chuckling. “That’s from the forest around here – no good,” he said in broken English. Then, pointing to his bag, he explained, “This is better.” Upon closer inspection, I noticed that his leaves were brighter green and smaller, whereas mine were broader and darker. Not wanting to start my mairungi career with the cheap stuff, I pulled out another 1000 Ugandan Shillings—worth about 60 cents—and bought a bag of his stuff.
“Bubble gum?” he asked, but I nodded negatively, instead showing him the root I’d bought. His eyes grew wide. “Ahh,” he said approvingly, “that has the most potential!”
Into my mouth went a wad of leaves and a nub of the root. My teeth began speedily chomping, encouraged by equal parts anxiety and excitement. Unlike the South American coca leaf or even American tobacco, mairungi doesn’t feature a flavor anywhere near the realm of pleasant: it’s bitter and nasty, about the exact flavor one would expect to discover when eating a random bush. Fifteen minutes later, I was still chewing, waiting for the effects to take over.
Meanwhile, I chatted with my new friend, the dealer. His name was Masaba Misim, he was 29, he’d been chewing since he was 19, and he’d been selling the stuff as his primary source of income for two years. Every morning, he explained, the truck from Kampala would deliver his goods. Sure enough, the package near his feet had his name inked upon it. He explained to me the ideal growing and selling procedures: keeping the plant just about head high, picking the top leaves, and getting it to consumers as fresh as can be, for the plant’s potency wanes within 24 hours. Masaba also outlined the different types of mairungi, which ranged from the high-quality sikiyo to the lower-end kasenge.
We chewed and chatted as a steady line of buyers visited the street dealers: men on bikes stopping by on their way to the town’s bustling covered market, groups of country folk jumping out minivan-taxis on their way home, well-dressed men claiming to be chairmen of various organizations, shabbily-dressed bums spending their last pennies on the next bag. The mairungi ritual certainly had a leveling effect for the Mbale population, as paupers sat beside princes up and down the street. There was a man wearing a buttoned-up Saddam Hussein silk shirt, another man with his belt pulled ridiculously high, and a younger Indian man who must have been on his second or third bag since his teeth were already fluorescent green. Though children were around—from the boy in the R Kelly shirt mixing Michael Jackson and Bruce Lee moves while kicking a blownup plastic bag to Masaba’s young friend, who didn’t chew but enjoyed the camaraderie—all of the buyers were at least in their 20s, showing that everyone seemed to agree this stuff was not for kids. And there was not one woman who purchased anything, only a handful that walked by with looks of disgust.
While a few of the consumers did business with Masaba, most employed the services of the man sitting next to our group, a dealer who was definitely not living up to the American motto of “never get high on your own supply,” shoving fistfuls of the mairungi in his mouth, gnashing his teeth like a madman, and sweating profusely from the racy effects. But he was obviously The Man here, for before him were three separate bags, each with a different strain, and he even had prepackaged baggies in his pockets.
Masaba and his companions rolled their eyes at this dealer, acknowledging that this man was deeply addicted and visibly overindulgent. Regardless, each of them—and everyone within earshot—proudly admitted that they chew mairungi each and every day. But when I asked why, they had no strong answers other than the social atmosphere the daily gathering creates. Addiction, it seems, is really what powers this daily ritual. There was at least one more solid answer from one of the older chewers: “This one is getting for you an appetite for sex.” (I didn’t mention as much to my female photographer friend.)
Thirty minutes into my first mairungi experience, that wasn’t happening yet, but I was starting to feel a little speedy. Once someone finally told me that I wasn’t supposed to be swallowing the pulp, a confusion due to an earlier mistranslation, but one that did not result in any stomach problems, I threw in a piece of bubble gum. The gum was a pleasant change, making the wad taste better, allowing it to congeal, and getting my jaws into a more rapid pace, which, either through placebo or reality, kicked in the drug’s effects a bit more. Within another half-hour, I was sitting with a mild sweat at the bar in Nurali’s, feeling like I’d drank three pots of coffee, afraid to indulge in conversations with those who were not chewing mairungi (I was the only muzungu, or white person, indulging). Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to spit the stuff out—my mouth and my mind loved it, even if my body and thoughts were out of whack.
Despite the jovial nature of the afternoon gathering, there’s a noticeable dark side to the whole endeavor that’s not lost on the chewers. “This is a drug abuse!” explained a man named Swaibu, tongue firmly planted in cheek as he bought his first bag of the day around 3 p.m. Holding it up and defiantly eating the mairungi, he proclaimed, “The church says it is bad, but we eat. We know it is not bad. You can’t fall down, you can’t beat people.”
Swaibu’s got a point: although mairungi is highly addictive and potentially destructive to these men’s wallets and home lives, it’s not the scourge that alcohol is. So long as their habit doesn’t dominate their lives—and it doesn’t serve as a “gateway drug,” as some in the Ugandan parliament are claiming—mairungi chewers can remain productive members of society, and aren’t inclined to the senseless violence that alcohol brings. And, like coke fiends and speed freaks, they tend to keep their sidewalk clean, often moving trash from the pavement to the gutter, a hygienic practice unknown in even the capital.
But there’s clearly a problematic pattern in Mbale with the mairungi chewers. Unlike the rest of Uganda, where cigarette smoking is rare and usually only done by those Africans who have connections to the tourist or humanitarian worlds, i.e. steady contact with Westerners, the mairungi chewers huff all the smokes they can get their hands on. More problematic, though, is that, due to the demanding noon-to-midnight mastication schedule, these chewers simply cannot hold down steady jobs. Nor do they seem inclined to seek out new work. Nor can chewing the drug habitually for many years be healthy for the mouth, mind, or heart. However, are these reasons enough for prohibition?
Since 1999, the Ugandan parliament has fielded a handful of calls for prohibition of mairungi, the latest being a 2004 debate led by top drug cop Michael Were, who complained, “Mairungi is being consumed all over the country in the open,” and listed off taxi and truck drivers as common users. But in the same debate, Were’s right-hand man Moses Adipa admitted that enforcing any possible ban would be tough. “While it is illegal to consume or trade in mairungi in Zambia and Tanzania,” Adipa explained, “it is not illegal in neighboring Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, among other countries.” Since Uganda’s borders touch Kenya, stopping the flow would be impossible.
All attacks on mairungi, however, are but sideshows to the barrage of real Ugandan problems: war, unemployment, corruption, poverty, disease. The sad fact is that many of the males in Uganda, from the jungled south to the arid north, aren’t employed in steady jobs, each of them piecing together just enough to survive. In that regard then, perhaps mairungi is the last worry for the Ugandan male. And when times are tough, sometimes a little happy hour with friends is just what the doctor ordered.