Baboon urine a hit with Zimbabwean women

Mutare's side-walk herb vendors are cashing in on crystallised baboon urine as married women seek remedy to contain their restive husbands.

With baboons only urinating on a single spot for years women hope that inserting the crystallised urine in their organs would help achieve the same discretion in their sexual partners who then can only have sex with them and no one else.

Ironically the same crystals are being sold to men as aphrodisiacs making the battle rather complicated.

Tendai Calpass, 18, an apprentice and sales agent for one Sekuru Noah Jairos Maparanyanga and operates from Mapembe in Odzi maintains the crystals are effective either way.

"They place the crystals on cotton and insert them in their organs. If a man decides to have sex with a girlfriend his organ will not work," Calpass said with confidence but admitting that it will cancel each other out where both partners use it.

Calpass claims that among the 59 different medicinal herbs they have in stock, those that have to do with love and sex are the most popular brands.

Sexually transmitted infections medical combos and love portions are popular among commercial sex workers.

"Prostitutes usually buy a herb called mudiwa-diwa which they mix with their lotions to attract clients," the young herbalist said.

As Calpass explained his vending trade operating adjacent TM supermarket, six high school girls came over enquiring about another herb popular among young women - one that helped with enlargement of their labia.

"This is called mudhonza or muputa and young women love it. You take it through smoking and when you sneeze the labia would enlarge," Calpass said. And he gets a lot of feedback on the herb's potency, he said.

He said while other herbs for the management of tuberculosis, herpes, heart disease and tonsils were popular, women often came for reproductive health or sexual performance related herbs. Menstrual pain and v*ginal tightening herbs are often high on their shopping lists.