Only ‘Castles in the Sky’ Built From Khat

By midafternoon, the heat, like the drug-induced conversation, is relentless.

The khat-chewing men of Djibouti, their eyes shining bright and their spit turning green, hit euphoria in a frenzied flight of fancy.

The women say the men are building “castles in the sky,” planning dreamy projects deep into the night that are forgotten after a morning’s sleep.

The men say gathering each day to chew the narcotic leaves is about bonding--even if it is “a waste of time.”

But in this impoverished port town that some people say could have been the Singapore of Africa, there is little else to do.

“We could have made Djibouti an industrial area. Instead, all the money disappeared into khat,” says 54-year-old Idriss Abdulahi, his eyes aglow during an afternoon khat-chewing session with friends. “We ended up drug addicts.”

Poverty is pervasive in this former French colony of 620,000 people on the Gulf of Aden, nestled between strife-racked Somalia and impoverished Ethiopia in eastern Africa.

Civil servants, who work only during mornings, form the majority of the limping work force in a country with 40% unemployment. Even they have not been paid for months.

Education ends at high school, where many boys--their prospects dim--have already succumbed to khat, which is legal here.

Every morning, an airplane from Ethiopia roars into Djibouti with as much as 10 tons of leafy stems of khat, or Catha edulis, worth about $500,000.

Impatient customers swarm over the town’s khat stalls before the sweltering heat forces residents indoors.

The United Nations estimates that 98% of Djibouti’s men and a growing number of its women chew the bitter leaf despite--or perhaps because of--their desperate poverty.

“We have no education and we have no work, so we chew khat. It makes me forget,” says Mule Aden Ali, an unemployed 22-year-old who lives off his parents--and demands money from them to buy khat.

“They gave birth to us,” he says bitterly. “So they must give us the answer to our troubles.”

Khat is everywhere. A police officer holds a bundle of leaves in one hand, an assault rifle in the other. Men chew as they tow young children through the streets. Taxi drivers with balls of green wedged in one cheek mindlessly wave at prospective clients.

Once the daily air shipment of khat comes in, a speedboat makes a run north across Tadjourah Sound, carrying bundles of khat to a demanding northern district. Trains and trucks head south with more.

The speedboat captain says that during the recent presidential campaign, he delivered free bunches of khat leaves to voters on behalf of the government candidate, Ismail Omar Guelleh, who won.

At election rallies and town meetings, on shady street corners, and especially inside afternoon meeting halls--known as mabraze--men stuff their cheeks with khat.

In one hot, dark mabraze, four old friends slip into khat’s embrace. The ceiling fan is still and a bare light bulb is dark. The electricity is out again.

Writer Ublike Carton brings his freshly washed leafy stems carefully wrapped in newspaper.

Idriss Abdulahi sits on a mat with a glass of chopped leaves and a thermos of sweet tea. The former legislator chews khat on Thursdays--because he misses his friends--but believes it is Djibouti’s downfall.

Jama Hassan is concerned about his teenage son, who is already using khat.

As they chew, the mood swings from the fatigue of stifling heat to a frenzied buzz of intellectual fancy, the talk that bonds Djibouti’s men.

“The only thing positive about khat is the conversation,” Abdulahi says.

Unlike more potent drugs that produce a stupor in users, khat seems to act more as an energy infuser, and the talk remains coherent.

Tea is poured. Carton swishes water in his mouth. He briefly chews leaves and spits them so he doesn’t rot his gums and inner cheek.

The sun sets, and the mood shifts again. The men are reaching mirghan--the khat climax--notorious for arousing sexual desire.

“It’s a good time to see the wives,” Hassan says.

The sexual impulse isn’t real, Carton adds. It’s just a drugged desire demanding immediate relief.

The lure of khat destroys families, Hassan says. It keeps men away from home, leaving Djibouti’s women shouldering family duties.

Mukia Abdi, 28, would rather stay single than marry a khat chewer.

“They don’t know what’s happening at home. They don’t care about the lives of their children,” she says at the pharmacy where she works.

“There is not enough money to bring home food; men who chew khat pay first for the khat.”

Abdi is one of a growing number of Djibouti’s younger generation of women taking a stand against khat by defying the African tradition of marrying young. They prefer to wait, however long it takes, for a man not addicted to khat.

Other women, like Hawa Daher, 30, live off the sale of khat.

But Daher, whose unemployed husband chews the leaf, hates the drug that she relies on to feed her seven children.

“If it were possible,” she says, “I would prohibit men from chewing khat.”