Looking for information about tobacco in Eritrea I found this article by Amanuel Sahle published in 2007 on Shaebia.org. It is more about the past than about the situation now. If you have data about what's happening now, let us know.
Also this paper by Victoria Bernal about the Eritrean Diaspora in cyberspace (pdf format).
Links at dehai.org , WHO's page, prevalence among adults (2005): women 1.2%, men 16.9%
Tobacco Comes To Eritrea
Amanuel Sahle, Mar 19, 2007
Eritrean Christian tradition says that the tobacco plant first grew on
the excrement of Judas Iscariot, the disciple of Christ who betrayed
his master.
“Is it in the Bible?” I once asked my friend.
“No, it is in the Apocrypha,” he replied.
Apocrypha? But, when the apocrypha was written, America, where tobacco plants have their origin, was not yet discovered.
Anyway this is a clever way of dissuading people from smoking which is considered a deadly sin: Behold, the High Priest has determined that cigarette smoking is dangerous to your spiritual health!
But what is funny about this world is that anything that is harmful often tastes good while it lasts. Remember, Adam and Eve ate of the delicious fruit and were kicked out of Eden.
When I was young I always wondered how people inhaled smoke and enjoyed it. My first trial with cigarette began with friends. We rolled a manila paper and set it on fire and drew on the other end. The result was a sever bout of coughing accompanied by torrents of tears.
Later we bought real cigarettes and went to the woods. After a few puffs we enjoyed it very much. And for fear that the rancid smell of our breath might give us away, we decided to chew eucalyptus leaves and for further precaution we bought mint caramels.
Not ones to give up easily, we improved on producing smoke rings in the air. We puffed double rings and then triple. We blew smoke though our nostrils like real dragons. But all this time, there were those who pretended to smoke with us but never inhaled the smoke. I don’t know how they managed to get their kicks.
My friend Zeray tells me that he had his first smoke in a cinema hall. He was ten years old. It was in the 1950s.
“I went to the cinema to try my first cigarette,” he says. In the darkness of the cinema hall, he takes his seats and whips out a cigarette from his pocket, turns around and asks the shadow sitting right behind him to light his cigarette. The shadow obliges. The film goes on. Zeray puffs away very happily. He coughs only once. He passes his first test.
The lights come back for the intermission. Zeray, turns around as if by instinct and what does he see? The shadow now assumes flesh and blood and happens to be his uncle.
Zeray wets his pants. He failed his second test.
It is said that tobacco was first introduced into Eritrea by the Portuguese in the 16th century. It didn’t take much time for the plant to become popular and find place in backyard agriculture. The snuff (tobacco powder) also becomes popular as stimulator. Peasants sniffed and chewed tobacco as the Indians of the Andes chewed Yerba Mate to give them strength in climbing steep mountain slopes.
Mr. Tesfamariam Negash ho has an encyclopedic memory of past things, told me a few years back that Eritreans used snuff box as far back as 1900. He remembers his great grandmother’s snuffbox and people ‘getting stoned’ together to preserve their stamina.
But then disaster struck, says Mr. Tesfamariam. One day, a certain Abyssinian king led his army to battle. During the march, he saw that some foot soldiers were collapsing by the side of the road out of sheer exhaustion.
“What’s going on?” asks the king. “The march hardly started and they are falling down!”
The king begins to suspect the cause of this infamous incident.
“They need tobacco powder to chew,” blurts one general.
“What!” shouts the king, “wait till I lay my hands on these goddamn Portuguese!”
Thereupon the king issues a decree to the effect that anyone caught chewing or smoking tobacco would have his lips torn out and executed.
According to tradition whose authenticity is disputable, it is said that the king went further and made smoking a deadly sin by having it inserted in Sinksar (biographies of the saints). The association of tobacco plant with Judas Iscariot’s excrement probably dates from that time.
But the decree having been issued by the O r t h o d o x Church across the border, it did not apply to Eritrean Catholics and as a result, certain people in the Debub Zoba, who are for the major part Catholics, are growing and smoking tobacco until now.
Decree or not decree, Eritreans of all walks of life and irrespective of creed and religious affiliation do enjoy smoking and chewing safa (powdered tobacco mixed with lime put between the lower lip and the gum).
Safa is for meditation, say ome aficionados of this terrible mix. Once I tried it and I began to reel like a drunkard. Two weeks ago in Keren I met an old man in his eighties enjoying his safa.
“You say you are eighty and you take safa?” I wondered.
“I have taken it all my life,”
“But, how about your heart? Don’t you have pity on your poor heart?”
The way he looked at me, I knew he was not one to quit easily. I am sure that when he dies, his heart will never know what hit it.
But the effect of the legendary origin of the tobacco plant still lingers on in our society. Many mothers would rather have their children come home drunk than sober and with a smoking cigarette held between their lips. As for Eritrean women, smoking cigarettes is the ultimate human degradation. Only a barmaid or a call girl could smoke with impunity.
I try to convince some of my friends that drinking is worse than smoking. At least a chain smoker doesn’t come drunk at night and beat his wife. They tell me that the loathsome smell of tobacco is hated by God and his saints.
In fact, cigarette smell is so much hated by Eritrean women that a passenger who smokes in a bus is considered a public enemy. That’s why some women carry lemon fruit with them and fight the horrible cigarette smell with citric fragrances.
In the past, tobacco was used by the peasant society to cure gangrenous sores on the back of beasts of burden. You just put tobacco powder on the wound and it works as disinfectant and antibiotic. Some people even used to wash their wounds with a tobacco solution for quick healing.
The problem arises when someone gets addicted to tobacco and his pockets are empty. I remember when I was a student the father of a friend of mine lying on bed with a sever headache because for some reason which I don’t remember now, there was shortage of cigarettes in Asmara.
“What are we going to do?” whined the members of the family with Daddy tossing and turning and pleading with God to rain cigarettes from heaven for his salvation.
We suggested going down town and collect cigarette butts from the street. We gathered enough to produce five cigarettes. When the patient took one puff he opened his eyes, got up from his bed and began to walk about. I felt I was witnessing a New Testament miracle. A plant that was supposed to kill and send you to hell afterwards, was able to restore life. Strange, isn’t it?
Modern cigarette smoking (with brand names) however began with the coming of the Italians. The first cigarette factory was established in Asmara by a Greek company, Mina Ananistolia. The factory was brought under the ownership of the Italian government and was named Monopolio Tobacco Dell’Eritrea in 1929. The British government took over in 1941, and in 1962 it was transferred to the Ethiopian government and in 1991 it went to its right owners.
In the 1950s there were many types of cigarette brands in Eritrea, but the one I remember most is Ideal which was manufactured in Asmara. It was very much liked by smokers and aroused a sense of patriotism in many Eritreans. The other equally famous and filtered brand was Nyala. But this was made in Addis Ababa and I remember people buying the unfiltered Ideal and frowning on those who smoked Nyala for nationalistic reasons.
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