Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [127]
My male reporters chew every day, often late into the night. Most Yemeni men chew, though not all make a daily habit of it. The nationwide dependence on qat is perhaps Yemen’s greatest development hurdle. The thirsty plant drinks the country’s aquifers dry, sucks nutrients from the soil, steals hours of productivity from workers, and causes a wide range of health and social problems.
I don’t need scientific reports to know the adverse effects of qat; I see them every day. My men constantly complain of insomnia and lack of appetite. Many of them are painfully thin, the result of skipping supper in favor of a cheekful of greenery. Their teeth are brown with decay. Several have complained to me about the depression that follows a good chew, which I’ve experienced myself. “But that’s when you just chew some more!” say my reporters.
Qat also keeps journalists from meeting deadlines, which causes me health and social problems. When the typical Yemeni workday ends, at two P.M. (not ours, alas!), many men rush from work to stuff themselves with stews and breads to line their stomach in preparation for a five-hour qat-chewing session. Because my reporters work evenings, they chew in the office (or the shed). On closing days, the drivers bring us rice and chicken for lunch so we don’t need to leave the newsroom—but the men still manage to sneak out to buy qat. Often, we will be ten minutes from finishing an issue, and all of my male reporters will simultaneously vanish. They cannot fathom getting through an afternoon without their fix.
Qat has been cultivated in Yemen for centuries—some evidence suggests it grew here as early as the thirteenth century. Ethiopia and Yemen are the two biggest producers, although it also grows in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan. There is some disagreement as to whether the plant originated in Ethiopia and spread to Yemen or vice versa. An Ethiopian legend holds that a goatherd was the first person to chew qat. One night he noticed that his goats were particularly wakeful and frolicsome. So the next day, he followed them and found them munching green qat leaves. The herder tried some for himself, and a habit was born.
Until the 1960s, qat chewing in Yemen was mostly an occasional leisure activity for the rich. But in the 1970s and ’80s, rising household incomes and increased profitability for farmers contributed to the spread of the practice. Now, about three-quarters of men and a third of women chew qat, according to a 2007 World Bank report. Other studies have found chewing even more prevalent. Most qat chewers are habitual users; more than half of those who chew do so daily.
MUCH OF WORK LIFE in Yemen revolves around qat chews. Friends working as consultants for government ministries report that decision making often happens in the qat chews that precede official meetings, rather than in the meetings themselves. “Which means that Yemeni policies are often made by men who are high as a kite,” says one consultant.
It’s easy to see how qat became so prevalent. For farmers, qat is lucrative—ten to twenty times more profitable than other crops. Its contribution to the economy is equivalent to two-thirds of the contribution that oil makes (oil revenues make up 75 percent of Yemen’s budget), according to the Ministry of Planning.