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Isdore Guvamombe
Saturday Lounge Reflections
Back in my village in the land of milk, honey and dust or Guruve, the September sun rose with a perfect smile, imperceptibly licking the brown-hued grass tinder dry.
The sun’s rays shook off the lethargy of morning due from tree leaves and grass.
Being a drought year, by mid-morning cicadas had broken into sorrowful melodies while clinging precariously on tree trunks. Other insects followed, albeit with faint voices.
They cicadas in particular, sang and prayed again and again in a shifting tapestry of vocal stylisation, and again and again as the heat intensified.
God and the ancestors seemed not to heed their prayers.
Instead, they appeared to have turned on the sun’s early morning smile into a huge, cruel and blisteringly hot frown that sucked moisture from the earth and baked the crust to a cracked dry chunk.
Boys being boys, the seven of us set off for Nyambanje Mountain, the last vestige of natural habitat for wildlife and a mountain famed for free growing cannabis, mbanje, marijuana, which ever name you want to call the herb.
We were escorting one village old man, Dhongi Gono (Male Donkey). How he got that name was never our concern.
The white colonial settlers in Rhodesia had mispronounced the name of the mountain Nyamhanji. But all the same it had remained scared and scary.
Here mbanje grew in groups of the young trees to huge trees. It grew in families. The mountain was dotted with these families from its foot to the apex.
In the village only elders with cotton tuft hair were allowed into the mountain and so did women past their mendicancy.
The elders went there to smoke mbanje and meditate. No one was allowed to carry home.
Many youngsters with ailments such as toothaches, earaches and hallucinations, among others, were taken to the mountain for treatment with various concoctions based on mbanje.
But before going up the mountain, one needed to empathise with the spirits that guarded the mountain and get their permission.
But on the ground, the laws of the country prohibited possession, growing and use of mbanje, but in my village, no one was arrested because no one took it home.
Villagers counted as many as 20 people having been killed by dangerous snakes while smoking the herd on the mountain. But they still went up the mountain, when need arose. It was a mountain affair but a treatment centre for many diseases.
In tow were our 16 dogs, the good tried-and-tested hunters of the hare, the impala, the wild pig and every plains game.
Nyambanje was also home to a buffet of wild fruits and a multifarious array of bird species — edible or inedible.
There mbanje, the illicit weed, grew to big trees and largely remained untouched in fear of their vanguard — Karitundundu — the ageless village autochthon of wisdom and knowledge.
With no shoes and clad in tattered clothes — all that our parents could afford — we went past the white man’s farms, dodging the security guards by using well-calculated routes.
For this villager, there was something uncharacteristic that limited his free movement. He wore a pant for the first time. Yes, for the first time, in Grade six. So, it hurt. It was uncomfortable and caging. Freelancing inside the shorts was over. It was the end of freedom.
Grandmother had bought it from a Jew’s shop, kwaMujuta, probably after realising the dangling bits were getting out of hand.
Suddenly the vegetation changed. Dhongi Gono led the way.
He wanted to go up the mountain and smoke his herb and feel healed of a disease we had no idea off.
His determination suggested he had lived on the benevolence of the herb. He explained to us in very simple terms that he was just not feeling well and the mbanje on the mountain would heal him.
But that was not our interest as boys, we wanted to hunt.
The dry tall grass on the mountain foot seemed to protest our arrival. Here and there quail and guinea fowl broke loose and scampered on the footpath but as soon as our dogs gave chase and got closer, they flew off, much to our chagrin and much to the disappointment of the dogs.
On the foot of the mountain, we saw a green valley, a former swamp sucked out of its water by the blistering heat. It was normally the drinking place for wild animals. More often than not, we had returned home with a kill from there. Being a drought year, there was no swamp at all, neither did we find a drop of water.
In a hunter’s gait, we spread over the valley, eyes open in search of any animal movement, our dogs sniffing and intermittently marking the territory with urine.
At the farthest point of the valley, there appeared extremely lush green vegetation and in characteristic cow-horn formation, we combed the area, while controlling the movement of our dogs, in case there rises an opportunity for an onslaught.
We closed in on the lush greenery and lo and behold!, two wild pigs bathed in a mud rut, ignoring all security measures. We closed in again and again, narrowing their chances of escape.
Suddenly they spotted us and the dogs set after them but the pigs gave a good run and sought refuge in a dark cave. The dogs barked and wailed at the cave’s mouth until we got there. We were on Nyambanje Mountain.
When the third and fourth dog took turns, they came back paddling, and out came a giant snake, standing up almost our height, its coffin-shaped head hoisted high for an imminent strike. Its forked tongue, sniffing for the enemy.
We scattered and ran for dear life. I am still not sure who shouted mubobo, the Shona name for black mamba.
We later regrouped on a rock promontory, huffing and panting and almost half the boys had wet their pants in fear.
Back in the village we had learned from elders that the black mamba was a very dangerous snake that has killed many people in the village and beyond.
But Dhongi Gono used another route, climbed up the mountain for his spiff. We waited for him until he came back about an hour later, feeling high and strong. He was excitable too.
He was happy to have made it to the mountain and done his thing.
Six months later Dongi Gono was struck and killed by a black mamba on the mountain of mbanje after he had gone back for medicinal excursion.
He became victim number 21.
Fast forward 2022, KKOG Zimbabwe a subsidiary of KKOG Global is building a state-of-the art- cannabis or mbanje research laboratory in Msasa, east of Harare to unlock medicinal value from mbanje and who knows how much our country will come up with in the treatment of various disease?
The United States is leading the race on medicinal cannabis research with 19 of its federal states legalising the use of herbal cannabis.
It has already started farming cannabis for herbal use and will attract about 150 researchers into Zimbabwe turning the country into a leading research hub.
KKOG, a company with a reputation to spearhead research in production and development of medicine from cannabis, with one of the medicines being used on immune boosting in the fight against Covid-19, is setting base and how I wish Dhongi Gono was alive.
The company has already started farming herbal cannabis in Chegutu and has dedicated acre upon acre on the plant.
The laboratory, according to KKOG, will attract as many as 350 research scientists in the quest to create new medicine to treat many ailments and especially medicine to boost immune systems against Covid-19.
The medicinal research arm at KKOG has patents like this product “Immunite” which helps boost the immune system of those in Africa.
It is registered in 24 countries and sold all over Africa currently through those countries’ medicinal boards, hospitals and pharmacies. It helps in boosting immunity against Covid-19.
Imagine we get one new medicine from cannabis, say against cancer in our research in Zimbabwe? That would be great? May Dhongi Gono rest in peace while KKOG turns Zimbabwe into a medicinal cannabis hub.
In 2018 Zimbabwe changed its law on cannabis cultivation in order to enter the growing global medical marijuana industry.
The narrative on herbal cannabis might have died in the media as soon as 57 companies were licensed but a lot of things have been happening behind the scenes and the country is setting up infrastructure to be one of the world’s largest hubs for production of cannabis and research in medicinal use.
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