Hello Overgrowers,
As @Magu suggested, I decided to create a thread about my experience with the Malagasy plants.
First of all, I need to say that I am born in a country and live now in another one where the plant is not legal. So I might miss the right terms and precise numbers. English is my second language, please tell me if I don’t make sense.
To elaborate the context, Madagascar is an island where 90 percent of fauna and flora are endemic. It’s a very multicultural country, closer to Asia (culturally and economically) than main land Africa. It’s an island between Africa and Asia. Some call us “Blasians”…
So the first people were Austronesians, they mixed with Arabs (we call them Karana), South-East Asians, Africans then English and French that creates a very strong DNA code with multiple cultures coexisting and mixing. There are more than 17 tribes that all got their very unique traits and language.
From what I know, weed is mostly grown/trafficked by the Dahalo or the Bara. In the past as a tradition, in those tribes you had to steal a zebu to become a man, the tradition went on and zebu stealing became the primal criminal in the island along with vanilla and precious stones.
With time the Dahalo worked with the Bara by selling them the stolen zebus that themselves got sold to high ranked Merina (the dominant tribe of the highlands) that then got sold to the Chinese. The repression always been very hard on those tribes, forcing them to leave in extremely remote area as the Makay Mountains, close to Isalo or the Betroka region for example and therefore took control of cannabis growing in those parts of the island, as a less risky business than zebu trafficking.
It’s quite war oriented tribes that are often armed. I visited a Bara village in the south. They bury their own in tombs high up in the mountains with their weapons. The funerals lasts days with different Fady (Taboos/forbidden things). They dance around and shoot in the air before … Quite of a vibe if you ask me.
When it’s harvest time the weed is conditioned in bouquets that weight between 100 and 200 grams raw with the sticks and tied together then I am not sure how they are drying it .
Then they put it in “Gony”, that are like 25kg bags or rice filled with bouquets… often carried by foot for days through rough paths. They are then transported in trucks on the rough roads of the island like that.
This is south eastern zamal.
They are then packaged in rolls for retail sales, that got different weight and processes. In some area the sticks and some seeds are sorted and removed before being put in the rolls. Those rolls contain anything from 5 to 10g of zamal and they cost anything from 500 Ariary to 20000 ariary depending on the location, size and quality.
Rolls from Ranomafana
It’s very sativa type plants.
Some yield a good amount of resin, that when processed, is very nice to smoke. Reminds me the old-school marrocan hash I used to smoke younger very groundy spicy aroma.
That’s what most of the population here smoke, along with consumption of Toka Gasy (literally alcohol malagasy, that is illegal and made from sugarcane) and on the coasts a lot of Khat chewing.
There is also this moss that is used as a substitute to cannabis called Huperzia Obtusifolia that grows in humid regions.
I’ll post another part later, about the hybrids and old Kush that are grown here,
Thank you for reading!
cheers
&
fire 
