The Desert And The Dope

Country legends, personal anecdotes and fabulous facts about the age-old relationship between cannabis and the Karoo

- Chris Marais

Sometime last year, I was in the backyard at home in Cradock, playing ball with TwoPack, our aged German Shepherd. And although I’m a bit of a Gobi Desert when it comes to gardening, I could not help but notice a waist-high newbie in the regular line-up of rosemary, pomegranate, jalapeno chilli, lavender and limes.

I held a brief consultation with my wife Jules and a freshly-intrigued TwoPack as we stood in front of a green fellow with serrated leaves and a very familiar shape. This was definitely Marijuana. Ganja. Dope. Mexican Devil Weed. What we generally call dagga. Now known in polite circles as cannabis.

“But how?” we asked each other.

“The builders!” was the conclusion.

Indeed, a gang of contractors had been renovating our old garage the season before. I had noticed that the wall they rebuilt had a wonky aspect to it, but at the time I put it down to another Karoo-style eccentricity. Jules remembered a certain spaciness in their general mien. TwoPack offered us his tennis ball and little more.

So we left it, deciding on a ‘watch-and-wait’ approach to the matter. Guests didn’t even notice this jolly green giant as it grew and grew over the coming months. If they did, they were just too polite to mention its presence.

TwoPack, meanwhile, was struggling in the mornings with his hereditary arthritis. Local wisdom advised that dagga oil was known to relieve such symptoms.

Hmm. It wasn’t long before we began to harvest from the dagga plant at the back. But I grew concerned, and crossed the road to chat to our lawyer buddy about the matter.

“Well,” he said, “As you know, the Constitutional Court says you can grow it and consume it in the privacy of your home – just don’t sell it or transport it and you’ll be fine. And did you say it was only for TwoPack?”