Growing the world's best marijuana

Lake Malawi. Photo credit: Mike Orson

 LAKE MALAWI - I walked down the white sands and met Winston Banda who stands with a friendly demeanour, his medium-length dreads framing a smile.

 He and I then travelled inland from the beach, treading a narrow path through the sprawling masses of cassava, the plants as tall as a man. Winston, whose name I have changed, inherited a substantial two-hectare plot of land in the Nkhata Bay region of Malawi. There, he grows crops such as tomatoes, potatoes, spinach, bananas and great fields of cassava –the starchy basis for the country’s staple dish, nsima.

 The cassavas have hand-like leaves, similar to those of the marijuana crop which Winston had carefully disguised amongst them. It’s a fine camouflage, used to veil the tall, emerald-green plantation of what many weed aficionada consider the world’s best marijuana, Malawi Gold.

 We approached the illicit field, my guide running his fingers through a nearby plant, proudly:

 “My step-brother bought the first batch of seeds about four years ago. These big ones are two months old. One month more and we’ll harvest them.”

 The buds are rich in THC (tetrahydracannabinol, the active, high-inducing chemical compound found in pot). The buds are harvested and then dried before packaging. Winston stood beneath a colossal banana palm - the large bunches of bananas hanging in the afternoon sunshine. “We use this for packaging,”he said, patting the side of the palm.

 We rounded a corner to his home –a red-brick, thatched affair, typical of the region –and found his 64-year-old mother, Beta, sitting on the earthen floor. She was skilfully packing up large quantities of marijuana in the leafy outer casing of the banana palm, the smell strong, despite how dry the stuff was. After she’d filled the length of a strip of palm, she closed the outer husk and quickly bound it in twine with practiced hands until it resembled a maize cob –a clever disguise in a country rife with corn fields. The completed cob was neat, handsome and reassuringly innocuous in appearance.

 Beta lives alone now, though there was a time when she followed her husband –Winston’s father –once a year to the copper mines of Zimbabwe. The pay was good but conditions were harsh, and her husband died in a mining accident some two decades ago. Now she rarely leaves her village on the lakeshore, but remains active and plays an important role in Winston’s illicit sideline business.

 At his nursery, lines of mesh protect the seedlings after they are sowed. The seeds are sown twice a year –in June and January. Now in the dry season, the young plants require watering three times daily, growing fast in the rich soils by a little waterway. Once the seedlings are big enough, the male plants will be separated from the females. Gender can be ascertained by the shape and size of the leaves. This separation of the plants prevents pollination, resulting in a bud with an incredibly high concentration of THC, known as “sinse”(from the Spanish sinsemilla, meaning seedless). The locals call their marijuana chamba, one of the unofficial Three Cs of Malawian export: chamba, chombe (tea) and chambo (a delicious species of fish found in the lake).

 There are two main strains of marijuana –sativa and indica. The former produces a high-like effect, whilst the latter will get you stoned. Malawian Chamba is heralded as one of the finest –and few - pure sativas in the world. Even as it grows, its leaves exhibit the trademark spice and pineapple overtones, beloved by the drugs cognoscenti.

 I asked Winston whether he was fearful of police activity in the area.

 “Not really,”he said. “I’ll just deny knowledge of it. And if they catch me smoking or dealing a small amount, a few thousand Kwacha bribe is all it takes.”This is an attitude you’ll find throughout Malawi, where the police can easily be bought. Bribery is almost a part of a police salary here, where every roadblock is an easy and ready means of making a quick buck.

 There is the amusing story of a police raid up in the mountains where there are huge plantations of chamba. One day, some years ago, the police happened upon a plantation and confiscated a large crop. To destroy it, they piled the stuff high, set light to it, and naively opted to stand downwind of it. The result was rather predictable.

Occasionally Winston or one of his friends will transport thirty or so cobs up to one of the nearest large towns. This is a different league and the return is good. But get caught and the bribe would be high –astronomical by local standards.

 “Are there many Rastas here?”I asked. “I’ve seen lots of Rasta flags…”

 “There are some, yes. But mostly the ones you see aren’t Rastas. Just people who get stoned and listen to Bob Marley,”he laughed. “But they’re still good people.

 “Sometimes Dutch visitors want to take seeds back to Amsterdam to show off to their friends. It used to be the bestselling marijuana in Amsterdam. They think it’s cool. So we have a clever way of hiding the seeds and getting them through the airport.”

 Winston lifted his bag and pulled out a traditional African fertility statue, carved out of teak. The little character, known as “cockroach”, has a bulging stomach with an umbilical hernia.

 “See,”said Winston, removing the little wooden umbilical hernia, and indicating a cavity in the belly where seeds could be stored.

 “What about hashish?”I asked him.

 “Oh sometimes we do a little of that, but only to order. It takes too long and requires about five cobs’worth just to make a tiny ball.”

 He held his thumb and index finger to indicate a marble-sized amount. “It’s sticky like chewing gum. It’s a tiresome process: we pound the herb in one of the wooden mortars, like we use for pounding cassava or maize for flour. Then we push it through a sieve. And then we pound it and sieve it again and again until it’s just right.”

 “What’s it like?”

 “Ha, oh it’ll fxxv you up,” he said, winking. “I had it before and was stuck to the beach, I couldn’t move for hours!”

 “How much does a ball cost?”

 “Not cheap –about mk10,000,”he replied. That’s about £20 GBP –inexpensive by all but local standards.

 A few weekends later, I walked along the same beach to find Mphatso. This time I would see something wholly different: we would be walking up into the mountains to see a larger-scale operation. This was not a trip I’d have felt remotely comfortable taking alone; strangers are not welcome near the plantations, especially not when the growers have desperately to protect their crop. With Winston’s introduction, however, I was able to venture into a new world unknown to most travellers, and even the police.

 The pot fields up in the mountains are a very different business to Winston’s agricultural endeavours. Up there, the growers carry guns and matters take place on a much larger scale. The massive annual production, packaged up in those maize-like cobs, reaches Tanzania, Botswana, Kenya, South Africa. Despite a rival marijuana strain from Swaziland, exports are impressive in much of Southern Africa thanks to Malawi Gold’s cult-like reputation. Dealers even speak of Jamaican Rastafarians visiting to take seeds to the Caribbean.

 In the inferno of the midday sun we walked the ferrous dirt paths, through lines of towering white-skinned eucalyptus plants, and up steep scree-lined slopes. In a forest of gmelina trees, Mphatso told me that 15 years ago the area was rife with hyenas. Now the forest was inhabited by people and the animals had been killed off, save for the mosquitoes, which hummed along as the wind gently pushed through the undergrowth.

 We arrived at a clearing –a high plateau which overlooked great swathes of lush, deep green land, and the azure shimmer of Lake Malawi in the far distance. It was lunchtime. A tall women with a strong physique stirred a huge pan of porridge-like cassava nsima whilst her children played in the dirt.

 To pass the time, Winston and I played a few games of bau on an old wooden board with stones picked off the ground. After thirty minutes, the marijuana farmer arrived. He was short, with a white cap turned backwards, a football shirt and a homemade knife resting on his belt.

“This is Chikakati,”said Winston. We shook hands, Chikakati smiled generously and made introductions in broken English before reverting to the Tonga language.

 After a morning in his fields, he was tired, but led us happily through tree-lined hills to a wide, flat expanse about an hour from his home. The field was immense, several hectares, and studded through with huge banana palms.

“Where is the chamba?”I asked in sketchy Chitonga.

“It’s in there,” Winston replied as we walked down to the field and through tall rows of maize, well above head height. We walked quickly over the furrowed ground, the earth covered in nitrogen-fixing groundnuts. I slashed my bare arms on the razor-edged leaves of young, green sugarcanes as we moved through the fields.

 “Hello sir!”

 I turned to see the beaming face of a young boy. Only fourteen, he spoke fine English, and had followed us down to help his father with the crop. I greeted the boy and we walked onwards.

 Winston began motioning at the undergrowth, pointing out the marijuana. Chikakati had lost count of them in the endless sea of maize and cassava. The keener I looked, the more of the things I could see –tall, weighty plants, moving gently in the light wind. Chikakati had been growing for more than a decade, and knew the patches of land which would give the best crop. Malawi Gold has intense, enduring psychoactive qualities, or at least can with the right conditions. Potency is down to a combination of soil nutrients, light, rooting and harvest –an expert farmer can make a tremendous difference in the finished product.

 The herb is grown largely for export. In fact, around 0.2% of the country’s GDP comes from illegal marijuana trade. Despite the low pay received by the farmers (only about a fifth of the final sale price), the 70,000kg of Malawi Gold produced annually is said to fetch more money than Malawi’s top export, tobacco.

 Chikakati found a large female plant. It was ready to be harvested, the larger leaves had dropped off and it looked thick and heavy. He indicated the bud, coated in tiny, glittering crystals.

 “Rub it in your fingers,” Winston instructed.

  I obliged, raising my hand to my nose. It was a rich, pungent aroma –a mix of scents such as dried pineapple, potpourri, a little allspice perhaps, hints of honey, tomato leaves. It was a fresh, delicious smell.

 He pinched apart a bud to reveal a tiny seed.

 “At harvest, some of the seeds will be taken out and set aside for future planting.”

 Chikakati swept his hand up the stalk to demonstrate harvesting. After drying, the leaves would be picked out, along with some of the stems and seeds. Growers aren’t as mindful of seeds and sticks as are those in the West. In Malawi, a far more relaxed attitude is taken, one that is the bane of the marijuana tourists here.

 He pulled the plant out of the soil and handed it to Bright, his 14-year-old son. Bright held the plant proudly, a broad smile on his face. He asked me to take a picture of him holding it, and clapped his hands when I showed it to him.

 We walked back to Chikakati’s home. I was conscious of the illegal plant we were carrying, but Winston assured me we’d be safe. Bright handed the plant back to his father before running down a path, returning some minutes later with water for us.

 At the clearing, Chikakati wanted to show me his gun –a local rifle which he kept in an outhouse. The gun-maker was one of his relatives, and both wanted to pose, grinning, for photographs next to the thing. He raised the rifle, which looked rather like a musket, and which was barrel-loaded. I kept away from the business end as the gun-maker demonstrated how to load and fire it. A little strip of card from a matchbox padded the firing pin, all rather haphazard.

 “They keep it loaded,”one said. “Mainly for keeping the monkeys away from the plants, but it helps as a deterrent for the police. He’s never shot anyone with it though. That would be foolish.”The gun was proudly carried back to the outhouse.

 There appears a double standard in the country, at least so far as the police are concerned. They will come down hard on the growers, but police are often to be found drunk at roadblocks, happy to take bribes and harass civilians. Alcohol is far more pernicious here and corruption a regular part of life.

 Back on the beach I met up with some of Winston’s friends –Tongans I’ve met before during nights by their blazing campfire after sundown as they played their hand-carved djembe drums and talked about life in rural Malawi.

 There is something rather idyllic about the lifestyle of Winston's friends. They sit out on the beach, under the intensely beautiful African stars, passing a little trade giving dreadlocks to the tourists, selling African crafts which they make themselves -– wooden carvings, bracelets and oil paintings. Under the night-sky, some of the men take to their dugout canoes and paddle several miles into the lake to trawl the water for somba (fish).

Theirs is a lifestyle of subsistence, lived out in a traditional manner, unchanged for scores of years.

Winston. photo credit: Michael Orson
Near Lake Malawi, Photo: Mike Orson