A view from the refugee camps: new Somali khat use in Kenya

Catha edulis, known in the drugs literature as khat and in Kenya as gat, miraa, murungi, veve, gomba, abounds with paradoxes. One of the curious features of khat is that it has become so closely associated with Somalis, both at home and in the diaspora, that consumption of twigs and leaves of miraa are widely assumed to be part of Somali culture and tradition. Yet, khat consumption by Somalis only gained wide popularity in the second half of the twentieth century (Goldsmith, 1997). So, how did miraa use and distribution in Kenya come to be a marker of Somali identity?