A new smoking trend has taken hold in urban Africa. It is socially acceptable and helps people to chill – but is more dangerous than many like to believe.
Shisha. The name alone conjures up images of sybarites wreathed in sinuous drifts of smoke. Such a soft dreamlike word implies relaxation – even a state of surrender. You want to decline to smoke a shisha, if you can.
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To smoke a shisha is to be with friends. It means taking time. It means not doing much, just chewing the fat and smoking the pipe. And, as one observant shisha smoker points out, it’s an effective mosquito repellent.
The dramatic explosion in shisha smoking in Africa’s cities from Kampala to Abuja, Joburg to Zanzibar cannot be overemphasis, just follow the smoke trail and you’ll find your local shisha café, full of men and women, boys and girls, getting their smoke on. (If not, here you go.)
But why has shisha gone boom recently? Another shisha smoker points said, “Shisha is sweet, and it doesn’t stink like cigarettes. I can go home and nobody will even know I smoked since it is fruit flavoured.”
“Smoking shisha serves as an extension of the modern African woman’s liberation – freedom of choice combined with a dose of rebellion while still fitting within the boundaries of the acceptable. Women are not smoking locally made Rex cigarettes while cheering on the Gunners; they are peacefully and calmly smoking the fruits of mother nature. Mint, berries, grapes and apples; so very demure, acceptable, pretty and fragrant: the definition of an acceptably perfect East African woman.”
It’s probable that famous shisha smokers such as Mario Balotelli, 2face, Tonto, Kim Kardashian and Drake have given the ‘brand’ a boost in the eyes of consumers.
The World Health Organisation says that smoking a shisha for an hour is worse than smoking 100 to 200 cigarettes. Local doctors across Africa have also joined in the chorus of condemnation. Also, nasty things lurk in those tubes, apparently, even tuberculosis. Somewhat ironically, the Mayor of Bor in South Sudan, not long before his town was razed to the ground a few months ago by conflict, ordered local shisha cafés to close, citing health reasons. Smoking shisha is not a healthy option…
This photo has been doing rounds on social media and has been a source of heated debate on the definition of a good father and whether the man who posted the above picture smoking weed qualifies to be one.This one is surely a bad influence to his young son.
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