Based on pervasive and dominant neoliberal and biomedical narratives, several people in the Diwa community perceive and understand Munya’s experiences as psychiatric disorders, attributed to the use of cannabis. General perceptions by the community are based on pervasive biomedical metanarratives popularized by media, education institutions and Christianity in the 21st century. However, Munya understands his experiences as direct manifestations of witchcraft and spirits, where his close kin or affine are engaged in sorcery for illicit wealth accumulation, which ultimately inflicts him into panic. Although his mother’s understanding of his situation was skewed to local explanations, she also hardly rules out the use of mbanje. She is always quoted, “Munya must also stop smoking so that we can also be certain on where his illness is coming from”.

Anthropologists note that individuals accept or resist, for instance, name-callings that underlie “sinful” perceptions about mental illness (see Bruun, 2023), such as those commonly deployed by insensitive community members. Although many traditional healers, psychiatrists and nurses in the Diwa community often use “kupenga” (“madness”) or “chirwere chepfungwa” (“mental illness”) as a shared cultural understanding that explains mental health experiences, Munya resisted these concepts and accepts ‘kuvhunduka’ (panicking), whilst his mother generalised his health condition just as kurwara (illness). Many people especially those who see him at the local shopping centre, where he often relaxes and accesses mbanje address him with different unfortunate delegatory names like vhundu (slang for panicking), mujambanje (notorious eater of mbanje), or tsviru or mupengo (dangerous “lunatic”). These names unseparated, denigrate and marginalise his ‘kuvhunduka’ condition. They rationalised his “panics” as adverse effects of smoking mbanje. Therefore, the community rejects Munya as reckless with his life, ill-mannered, evil, or dangerous to the children. However, the most intricate characteristic of the story was that some of Munya’s colleagues who supplied mbanje or smoked with him were hardly misconstrued as persons with “mental illness”. Unlike some of these unsensitive community members or his colleagues, Munya however appreciated our friendship because I always addressed him by his real name, Munya, and his situation as ‘kuvhunduka’, a concept he preferred and perceived to better explain his condition.

Whilst ‘kuvhunduka’ was not a universal or common local concept used to describe mental illness experiences in Diwa, it was a concept that Munya used to describe his illness. Munya carefully chose this term to eschew the precarity associated with mental illness and mujambanje. Munya suffered stress, self-rejection and self-unworthiness from some community members. For Munya, the notion of kuvhunduka explains how he “panics” whenever he is being attacked by witchcraft familiars. Despite his acceptance of kuvhunduka, this notion has never been a perfect experience for Munya. It was a creation of witchcraft that was harming his life. Contemporary, very few people in Diwa wanted to be addressed as kuvhunduka because of how the concept has been used to explain Munya’s experiences which resonated with labellings levelled against him based on his health challenges. Kuvhunduka has acquired new negative meanings associated with “madness” and the reckless smoking of mbanje.

As Munya’s condition continued to deteriorate, he preferred to be understood as simply munhu akadhakwa (drunk person) rather than munhu anovhunduka (panicking person), because some community members have transformed kuvhunduka into the slang form vhundu (the act of panicking) to describe him as “madman”. It can be noted that the notions and concepts preferred by those people experiencing “mental illness” are transitory and require a great level of sensitivity.

The factors that pushed Munya into smoking can be encapsulated in his account: “Now I just want people to say I am drunk, not mad. Being seen as mad is embarrassing and shameful. They used to say I am intoxicated by mbanje, at least if I smoke, they will just say I am drunk. I have seen that those who are intoxicated are viewed better than me. I can also forget about relatives bewitching me and gather confidence to fight them”. The use of mbanje has never made his discrimination and stereotypes better. He acquired a new name, mujambanje (reckless consumer of mbanje), which makes Munya the sole architect of his mental illness. Munya’s ‘kuvhunduka’ further highlights how complicated relationships, names and notions in cannabis use and mental illness can be created. For Kleinman (1988), this is what he has described as rhetorical skills of individuals in deploying idioms sometimes to escape shame associated with their symptoms. However, these skills have always met some resistance from the community.

In the prolegomenon of this article, Munya’s mother and bamunini construct Munya’s experiences, as “psychosis” attributed to excessive smoking of mbanje by someone too young. Although cutting of incisions (nyora) on the body as a way of trying to detoxicate individuals from mbanje is not a shared and generally accepted cultural understanding, it gives us meanings on how community especially close kins or affines can easily construct “mental illness” as the manifestation of cannabis use. In contrast, Munya articulated his side of the story which refuted the association of his condition with cannabis use. He recalls that his kuvhunduka had started before he even started smoking mbanje. Munya explainedMy situation started well before many people [including his parents] knew it. The people who first noticed it were my classmates. I went to school, and my colleagues, said I was speaking too much, not that I was speaking louder but speaking without listening or giving others time to speak. Christine, one of my classmates was the first to notice it. She went to tell her mother that the way I was talking too much (kutaurisa) was problematic. I was panicking (kuvhunduka) and my heart was beating faster. I am not mentally ill (kupenga) but its kuvhunduka. I had not started smoking mbanje when I started kuvhunduka. My situation did not start in the field that my mother always referenced. Yes, she first saw it when I was in the field on chisi and suspected that it was mbanje. I started smoking later after five years from this field episode.Based on this account, Munya started smoking mbanje to heal himself from existential precarity: “depression”, stress, “anxieties”, stereotypes and discrimination which arose from some insensitive community members. He had already started speaking louder and panicking.