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Mercedes Sayagues tries a popular Southern African aphrodisiac, but finds the side effects too hot to handle
I tried wankie, and it works. But I don’t think I will try it again. Wankie (herbs, in seShona) is the generic word for traditional aphrodisiacs for women in Zimbabwe, but there are as many names as varieties.
It comes in two forms. One is a reddish powder taken daily, one teaspoon diluted in porridge or soup.
“It will make your body hot, so when your husband touches you, he will want to embrace you,” whispers Dr Barbara Sibanda seductively.
Imposing in a white and gold satin ruffled dress, Sibanda is a healer and the daughter of a famous spirit medium in Bulawayo, where she owns a clinic that combines modern and traditional medicine.
Wankie also comes in another powder, which is inserted into the vagina before sex. It is guaranteed to make you feel the way a Zimbabwean man likes his woman: hot, tight and dry.
For many, dry sex is the last thing they want. In some parts of Africa, men apply jelly for easier penetration. But in Southern Africa, dry is the way most men like it. A study in Zambia found 86% of women interviewed practise dry sex.
The wankie I tried was made by Mpanda Ncube (75), the resident inyanga at Sibanda’s clinic. I cannot say it makes for better sex, but I can vouch it fulfils its promise to make a woman hot, dry and tight.
These qualities increase friction during sex. Plenty of friction, says Agnes Runganga of the Human Behaviour Research Centre in Harare, “is considered the best sex in Zimbabwe. For men, that is. I call wankie an ejaculatory aid, because it makes sex good for men.”
Women from all walks of life use herbal drying agents, says Runganga, co-author of a study on wankie. At a health clinic in Harare, 93% of patients and 80% of nurses used it.
In the Congo, one study found that 42% of prostitutes and 35% of married women inserted crushed leaves in their vagina before sex to tighten it.
Wankie can be bought at the market or from sellers at public toilets. Runganga says educated or affluent urban women may look down on it, but use other methods to get dry: douching with water and Dettol, drying with cotton wool, or applying toothpaste or fertiliser.
At an Aids counselling centre in Harare, director Lynde Francis says 75% of patients have used some form of wankie and 20% use it regularly.
Francis advises them to stop. Some herbs are irritating or toxic. Dosages may be wrong. Harare’s Botanical Gardens has a poisonous-substance file that documents many cases of women who became sick or died after using wankie.
Ethnobotanist Stephen Mavi, who has researched traditional medicinal plants since 1985, says: “Wankie effectively gives the illusion of virginity, but I don’t encourage women to try any drug that has not been researched, because of its possible side effects.”
The last casualty he recalls was three years ago. Two women inserted roots of Combretum erythrophyllus, a riverine tree common in the Highveld, in their vaginas. Both suffered renal failure. One died.
Wankie may be deadly in other ways in these days of Aids. Increased friction, combined with herbal agents, may cause microscopic lesions on the fragile vaginal walls. These small sores are a door to infection with sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/Aids.
The Congo study found that, out of 30 herbs identified by users, five cause inflammation in the vagina. Continual use may erode the cervix. Researchers suspect a link between the high rates of cervical cancer among Zimbabwean women and their use of vaginal drying agents.
Also at stake is Aids prevention: if men like a woman hot, dry and tight, they will be less eager to use a condom.
Why do women do it? “Absolutely for male pleasure,” says Francis. “When women try to stop using wankie, it’s war. Husbands don’t listen to reason.”
Wankie is linked to deeply held beliefs among Shona people that fertilisation requires a clean environment and that vaginal secretions are unclean. “Men here find female fluids disgusting, smelly, dangerous, and evidence of loose morals,” says Francis.
Men’s beliefs entwine with women’s insecurity. “Women are in competition for the ever-diminishing male pool, either for economic or emotional reasons, and will do anything to keep a man,” says Runganga.
In the old days, Shona fathers’ sisters taught young women about sex. Urban migration has weakened family ties and traditions, but the education is still passed around informally among peers, at kitchen parties, or through traditional healers and midwives.
Last month, Dr Peter Mutandi Sibanda, cultural secretary of the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association (Zinatha), saw about a dozen young women between 16 and 25 whose men didn’t want to have sex with them. “The men found them disgusting, not at all within African culture. Men want a tight vagina; no fluids, no lubrication and no foreplay,” he explains.
Because the aunt has not done her job, young women don’t know how to offer sex that is pleasing to men. Sibanda sends them to chimamhari kuputudza, training with an elderly woman who teaches them sexual positions, sexual behaviour and how to give dry sex.
“Prostitutes still use traditional ways. This is why men frequent them: they give men what they want,” says Sibanda.
He recalls a night he spent with a woman renowned for her aphrodisiacs. “Her grip made the penis very angry. I could not come out of her – every time I tried it was like a cold wind blowing. At the end of every ejaculation, I felt like she had teeth on her cervix.”
He grabs my hand and gently scratches around my middle finger with his fingernails: “Like this.”
Compared to that, my wankie was toothless. But it was not unpleasant. Half an hour after insertion, I felt a glow inside the pubis. A slow, warm, concentric wave expanding. My pubis became congested, my vagina felt expanded, the labia bigger. It was hot, tight and dry.
To call these herbs aphrodisiacs, however, is misleading. The sexual aids developed by traditional medicine in Zimbabwe are designed to enhance male pleasure, to make women more attractive to men.
None heightens women’s sexual appetite or experience; they make a man satisfied.