Pot Plantation Found in Ugandan Nunnery: Newsworthy Only If You Don't Know Ugandan Appetites for Pot

Ugandan police found a marijuana plantation in the garden of a convent and have questioned two nuns and two porters. The porters were arrested, but not the nuns, the BBC reported Friday.

"I don't know exactly what these nuns (or their gardeners) were up to, but anyone leafing through the history books can see that dope-smoking is a venerable Ugandan tradition," Andrew Rice, author of the recent The Teeth May Smile But the Heart Does Not Forget: Murder and Memory in Uganda, tells Surge Desk.

In fact, Rice says, the Catholic Church has done a better job of changing Ugandans' religious beliefs then their appetite for marijuana. "When the budding missionary movement first came to the region, at the end of the 19th century, the Catholic and Protestants' efforts to convert the court of the kabaka, the region's king, were resisted by a group of animist traditionalists known as the 'wa-bangi,' so named for their taste for bang -- or pot.

"The animists eventually gave up their gods," Rice added, "but the Ugandan taste for weed has proven to be a lot more difficult to uproot."