Khat rules as the drug of choice for Somalis

Educated women dominate the trade in profession both admired, scorned

By EMILY WAX Washington Post

WAJID, SOMALIA - Before Somalia's government collapsed in 1991, Maryann Ali was an elementary schoolteacher who spent her days giving fifth-graders geography and math lessons. Now she earns a living dealing khat, a narcotic plant that when chewed yields a jittery high and feelings of invincibility that later melt into a lethargic stupor.
Educated Somali women like Ali dominate the khat trade, a profession that is both admired and scorned here and that offers one of the few remaining job opportunities in the country's moribund economy.
"If the country was ever normal, I'd quit and return to teaching," said Ali, 40, who guards her stash with an AK-47 and has a gold tooth that she says makes her appear "tough.
"What else can I do to survive?"
Somalia, a country of more than 8 million ruled by warlords, has the highest percentage of khat users in the world, researchers say.
Scarred by violence and raised in anarchy, a generation of young Somalis say King Khat, or miracle miraa, as the drug is known, helps ease the pain.
Researchers estimate that 75 percent of adult males use the drug.
Every town has khat rooms, where men lounge for hours listening to blaring music and chewing wads of green leaves that ooze saliva and stick between their teeth.
The consumption of alcohol and most drugs is socially unacceptable in this Muslim country, but chewing and dealing khat are considered gray areas.
So Ali, a mother of 10, peddles the narcotic, which she said enables her to earn money and abide by the philosophy of Somalia's tight-knit clans: "Above all, provide and protect."
Illegal in the U.S.Khat is legal in much of sub-Saharan Africa and enjoyed throughout the Horn of Africa and in parts of the Middle East, especially in Yemen. It is illegal in several African countries, the United States and Europe.
In 1980, the World Health Organization declared khat a highly addictive drug. In Somalia, opponents call the habit a national epidemic.
Khat crops have flourished in neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, where farmers started uprooting their coffee plants when the world coffee market crashed in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Problem getting worseKhat chewing had long been a urban habit, with most rural farmers typically too poor to buy it, but humanitarian workers say that men moving from the farms to towns are starting to pick up the pastime, borrowing money to support a habit that also suppresses appetite.
"Every meeting we have with the Somali community, khat is identified as a major problem that's getting worse," said Regine Kopplow, a project officer in health nutrition with the U.N. Children's Fund in Somalia.
Ali gets her daily supply of khat from her clan's warlord.
"I just don't see a better way," she said in a raspy voice recently as she sat in line with other female sellers under a thatched roof market.

Source: www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/3811587.html