Zonking Out on Khat With a Woozy High

Zonked-out: slang - ...to sleep, especially from physical exhaustion or the effects of alcohol or drugs

Woozy: slang - ...dazed or confused

 

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Fantastic, and hilarious, and of course sad, review of Jessica Behsir's film on the chewable drug khat. It is on the British paper The Guardian: Faya Dayi review - the ups and downs of zonked-out bliss (written on June 20 - 2022 - by veteran British journalist and film critic Peter Bradshaw). 

What serious writer uses "zonked-out" when writing about substance abuse - other than one sympathetic with the drug, and the behavior? Zonked-out is far more accepting than "drugged-out," or even a more measured "addicted."

I'm posting the article in full, since at some point the "free" reading ability is taken away (I think after a dozen reads).

Faya Dayi review - the ups and downs of zonked-out bliss  

 

First-time feature director Jessica Beshir weaves a voile of torpor and reverie in this dramatised, poeticised documentary in gauzy monochrome about the cultivation of the khat plant in Ethiopia. Chewing its leaves induces an addictively woozy high, and it has long been treasured by certain followers of Sufism as an aid to religious contemplation.

The title is an incantatory chant uttered by the farmers of khat at their work – meaning “birth of wellbeing” – but in fact the film contrasts the zonked-out near-bliss of the khat consumers with the very hard work involved in actually producing it, along with the reality of what addiction means, with families torn apart. Khat is a part of their poverty, their discontent, their sense of imprisonment, and their (temporary) escape. Some young people employed in khat production are shown here listlessly dreaming of making it as refugees to Europe or to Saudi Arabia, where members of their fractured family have gone. There are ruminative monologue-voiceovers, memories and thoughts that Beshir has perhaps elicited through interview and research and reconstituted in scripted form.

The religious aspects of khat are not much touched upon: in fact this spiritual dimension has effectively migrated to the lustrous cinematography itself. But the film does talk about a political element: the farmers’ protest in 2015 against poor living standards and government arrogance, and specifically against a plan to expand the boundaries of the capital Addis Ababa which meant clearing farmland and crushing the farmers’ livelihoods and crops – including, of course, khat – a protest that ended in brutal suppression.

 

When the wisps of khat smoke clear away, it is perhaps not easy to decide exactly what is left behind, or to decide if khat is a cultural practice to be celebrated or rejected: but there are some marvellous images and moods in this misty, impressionistic study. 

  

Faya Dayi is released on 24 June in cinemas and on 29 July on Mubi. 

 

But of course, you do realize that these "zonked out" khat cultivators in their woozy high are the Oromo youth of southern Ethiopia. Beshir literally made her film on their backs, gathering thousands in prize money that she could put to use to rehabilitate these young men, and which she wont. There are other film projects to prepare with that money!

And I've written about this falsified governmental oppression that these leftist papers like The Guardian accentuate, when the reality is that ALL Ethiopians were equally "oppressed" under the brutal Marxist governments of the past decades, which eventually led to their (the governments') downfall, bringing in a new era of a half-Oromo PM, whose mission IS to rehabilitate his Oromo brethren.

Once again, the hypocritical Beshir is best to either keep her mouth shut, or to join forces with PM Abiy's practicalities of helping khat-addicted Ethiopians with her prize money she gained through these very Oromo youth's hard labor.

I doubt she will do either.