Le chanvre

I will never understand how Cameroonians can get some things so wrong. For example; le chanvre, or marijuana. Cameroon is a country full of people who love Bob Marley. They lovingly call small braids that hang from the head “les rastas!” with a voice so spunky you would think they have to love the Rastafarians. They wear their hippie red, green, yellow, and black woven hats, thinking that they could be none other than Cameroons colors. This is also a country that LOVES the bottle. Even the Muslims have been known to doctor their cokes with the 20 cent plastic “sachets” of single shot, low grade whiskey, vodka, rhum, or gin. They watch their brothers get violent on Christmas morning when, after having spent all evening blowing their yearly savings at the bar, they fight over one thing or another, sometimes ending with broken bottles in West-Side Story-style street fights.

Here is what I will never, ever be able to understand: how can every violent act in this country be attributed to marijuana use? I just saw my counterpart today, when he recounted to me a story of an 18 year old relative who threatened him and came after him with a machete, promising to kill him. In this discussion at the bar, I happened to suggest that maybe the 18 year old boy was mentally disturbed. To me, that sounds like a logical explanation, especially for an event that took place over an entire day. Everyone at the bar immediately refused my explanation, and they all, oddly enough, suggested that the boy had just gotten high from marijuana.

How does it happen that an entire country missed the widely well-known and well-accepted stereotype that people who are high from marijuana are, in fact, very apathetic, sometimes lazy, and generally peaceful? Do they not watch the movies or listen to the music? How, on earth, did acts of violence and aggression skip over the relationship with booze (which is consumed by absolutely everyone, from fetuses to babies, to children, teenagers, and adults), mental illness (possibly caused by alcohol consumption), general unhappiness in life or with society, and get nailed to the cross of marijuana use. Sorry, marijuana, but you’re going to have to carry the sins of all of society.

I have never had the talk with people here about the questionably well-recorded medicinal properties of marijuana, or the discussion of whether or not it should be lifted from a criminal offense in certain states in America to possess. I am even afraid to try to convince people that their stereotype of violent marijuana smokers is way off mark because I fear being labeled as one of “them.” I don’t even know how to suggest that the boy who tried to kill Serges should probably be evaluated for mental illness, instead of being labeled as a “them.” And how did alcohol get off scot-free?

Marijuana is a scape-goat for many problems in Cameroon, which leaves the greater societal problems left untouched. Perhaps if violence in the home and on the street and general low mental development was more attributed to alcohol consumption, fewer parents would feed their babies beer or whiskey.