Travelling through African countries can be a tricky affair at the best of times. You’ll often hear, “T.I.A” or “This is Africa”, referring to the often late, non-existent or down-right tedious nature of getting anything done on the continent. Getting around usually requires a lot of long and uncomfortable journeys, sometimes for up to twelve hours at a time. Often you’ll be sandwiched into overcrowded minibuses loaded at double the suggested capacity and with a bit of livestock thrown in for good measure. Despite all of this we faced the challenge ahead, motivated by the possibility of finding a new source for authentic Malawi Gold cannabis.
When you arrive in the country of Malawi you’ll no doubt be struck by the laid-back feeling of people. They are friendly and welcoming despite the serious daily struggles they are currently facing. At the moment they are enduring a fuel crisis because the Government hasn’t got enough foreign currency. Hardly surprising given that 65% of citizens rely on subsistence farming and therefore do not contribute to the economy. There were queues thirty cars long just to get petrol which meant that we were paying above odds for anything involving a vehicle!
We had two primary reasons for being in Malawi. The first was to take the opportunity to spend a week at a farm where we took a permaculture course. Here we learned sustainable gardening practices, companion planting, how to deal with insect pests and much more! After finishing that, our plan was to follow the lake about three hours South using some information we had picked up along the way and with the hunch that we were headed to the most likely place to find what we were looking for.
We wound up in a popular lakeside town and met our contact by pure chance in a local cafe, he was the owner and had been making a modest living as a musician and craft artist. With a sign on the wall suggesting his banana pancakes were world-famous, we sat down and grabbed some breakfast overlooking the bay. He had started to roll something up whilst we were eating and so naturally we started talking weed. We asked him for a few buds and mentioned that we were looking to check out the fields, so he wrapped up some of his personal in some torn-up paper and we headed back to where we were staying to have a smoke and see if we were on the right track.
We went and sat by the lake and checked out the flowers, they were well compressed but not too badly damaged. Breaking the flower apart you could smell some pine, tropical fruit and minty terps. It didn’t have the vitality you would expect from correctly-dried, stored and cured crops but it did have plenty of resin, leaving sticky fingers after crumbling it down into the joint. It got rolled up with some RAW papers and burned well, if a bit too hot and dry. There’s a lot of debate about ash colour but for those who are interested it came up pretty clean and white with no extra unpleasant harshness on the throat or lungs.
After a few minutes it had crept up behind the eyes and a very cerebral effect developed with absolutely no heaviness in the body, a sure sign of the sativa genetics at play. Pretty quickly we were feeling creative and chatty. The high didn’t let up for quite a few hours and the feeling was enjoyable with only a little bit of paranoia here and there leaving no obvious comedown or tiredness to deal with. We went ahead and made a plan with the guide to visit the local farm the following week. We paid for the motorbike rental, food and also a little something for the farmers to make it worth their while for letting outsiders see what they do.
The day came, and after a bit of mucking about in the morning (T.I.A), we got picked up and travelled a few hours on the motorbike to reach an isolated village community. The local area is known for tea and macadamia production and there was a large free flowing river running right through the mountainous terrain providing good conditions for growing. Before making the last hike to the fields, we stopped for some food and whilst that was cooking the guide went into one of the local mud houses and returned with a healthy-sized “cob” of Malawi Gold. They explained that this had been wrapped up in dried banana leaves, using just a little moisture on the hands to soften the leaves and help the humidity balance once sealed.
Apparently this was two months old but it was hard to be sure of the accuracy given that we visited in mid-October and they had only just started harvesting. Anyway, opening up the cob we found a solid stick of buds meshed together and compacted. The colour was a vivid green, seemingly losing little in vitality from harvest, and this was a surprise as we thought it would end up a darker more oxidized colour. The idea is that the older cobs develop a different character after six-months to a year, undergoing a mild fermentation, but sadly we didn’t get to try the aged version this time round.
Inevitably we got to roll something and ended up discarding quite a few seeds as we broke it down, the whole process was watched keenly by a few of the local kids and a puppy. The dog actually went home with the motorbike driver who decided to buy it and paid less than a dollar! The smoke was smooth and followed a very similar pattern to the one described earlier, but this time you could definitely taste more of what you could smell. We all developed a nice appetite and finished off the boiled banana, soya and tomato onion stew our guide had prepared for us.
At this point we were all feeling pretty high and it was a sweaty 38 degrees celsius, which would usually mean doing basically nothing and trying to stay cool, but we had to get going down the trail. Before we headed off our guide magically pulled out a two-litre plastic bottle which he said contained local honey. The bees that make it were living amongst the crop we were about to visit and this was by far the best honey we had ever tasted in our lives! He handed it to us and as we passed it around, we each took a cap of this liquid gold.
This stuff was a welcome boost to our blood sugar and something that really helped the soaring high of the sativa seem more manageable. We set off and descended in the direction of the river through some pretty tricky landscape, steep hills and narrow rocky paths. We were told that this naturally helped to prevent any attempts from law enforcement to come and take the plants. The Government of Malawi did pass a law in 2020 to regulate the industrial cultivation of hemp but it’s still a little unclear what future holds for recreational growth and consumption so these guys were still taking precautions. After crossing the river and scaling the bank, we stood looking into an opening of what seemed like just a large area of banana trees in the near distance.
We walked closer and began to appreciate the invention of the farmers to disguise their crop. Having recently completed the permaculture course, our minds were focused on their methods of cultivation, looking out for techniques to learn from. We got shown into a cut away area of the bananas, where inside were a few hundred plants of Malawi gold were intercropped with maize, tomatoes and herbs. The guide said the farmers had taken down most of the big plants as they were mature already, leaving only a few nicer sized flowering trees for us to see.
This plant is ready when it’s ready, how could we complain? The sun ran from East to West in a straight line over the plants and here you could see a few different phenotypes, all of which expressed the full sativa character: tall and skinny (if not towering twelve-feet high in some cases), narrow leaves, red petioles and leaf stems, open and airy flower structures with plenty of space between nodes. The calxyes had a healthy covering of resin and most of which had the fresh pineapple, minty aroma experienced in the dried bud. There were a few plants with more appealing structures, one caught the eye with its pine-cone shaped cola (not yet fully developed) and mixed among these were a few males, intentionally left to provide enough seeds for the next rotation. Sinsemilla here isn’t important but resisting cross-pollination from foreign genetics is. We wrapped things up and headed back, finishing another joint as we walked to the bike. These guys have the ambition to do more with these plants and it seems that with a bit of investment they might be able to bring more workers in to manage the farm and make a legitimate living. We agreed it’s important to protect these genetics as their future is partly in the hands of these farmers.
They have done a really good job of preventing the dilution of this famous landrace so far but if temptation is given into, we might find it’s too late to rescue if foreign or Indica males find their way into the gene pool. Take the example of the importance given to agricultural products like wine and cheese. In Europe these can be certified with a protected designation of origin, giving them an economic advantage in the marketplace and ensuring imitations cannot be allowed to proliferate. Think of how the market value of Champagne is almost five times higher than that of other sparkling wines. PDO protection says two things to the customer: this product is authentic and it is of high quality. Imagine dispensaries in LA or Bangkok being able to offer their customers a taste of a true landrace alongside all the other crazy hybrids and hype strains dominating the marketplace.
Malawi is full of creative and hard-working people with a great spirit. There are however some obstacles for them to overcome in terms of their economy. We have seen most recently from the change witnessed in Thailand, that there is an emerging tourism market for cannabis enthusiasts and industry professionals who surely would benefit from first-hand experience of this special plant. We also can’t forget those who might not be able to make a big international trip but would love to get their hands on an 1/8 th of this classic landrace in their local dispensary. Since the formation of the Malawian Cannabis regulation authority (CRA), we’ve yet to see Malawi farmers advance beyond the red tape.
Those wishing to start cultivation first have to apply for a license that can range between $2000 and $10,000. This is dependant on whether they intend to process or export the crop and whether it is industrial hemp or medicinal cannabis. The size of these fees might well prevent local farmers access to the market and raises the concern as to who will really benefit from the opportunity that this new legislation brings. In an ideal world we might see Malawi Gold become a certified landrace varietal. To do this we would need to develop a global body or commission whose job it would be to understand and define the growing practices, genetic structure, psychoactive and non-psychoactive qualities. They would visit the growers and have the power to rubber stamp each farm with an internationally recognized seal of quality. From there, Malawians could realise the potential of this plant, provide a stable income to their families and in turn produce a much needed boost to the economy. All of this could be possible by protecting their famous landrace and sharing its unique qualities with cannabis consumers around the world.