"From a drug addict to a drug fighter" The Leader October 27 - November 2, 2006 by Lucy Mwaniki

When David Ogot was riding a motor bike with no licence he fell into a ditch that was at the middle of the road in India. A sharp piece of metal pierced through his chin and dismantled part of his dental formula

"When I spit out what I thought was sand from my mouth, I found it was my teeth that had been knocked down by the piece of metal," he says with a light touch.

Pointing to his chin, he explains, "The difference between here and the throat is just an inch. If that stone had passed through my throat, maybe someone in my family could be saying we had a son named Ogot."

His is a story of a recovering drug addict who could not spare even a cent due to his drinking habit. The 45-year-old journalist, who is now on the frontline in the fight against drug absue, has lived to tell the story and help out those already addicted.

His 27-year drinking "career" started when he was a primary school pupil. His father, Professor Bethwell A. Ogot, the Chancellor of Moi University, used to stock different brands of wines and beer, which the young Ogot could taste in his fatehrs's absence.

"I stole pilsner from my father's cabinet but I spitted it out since it was so bitter," he told a gathering at Muran'a County Council Hall during a drug abuse seminar organised by the National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse last week.

The practice went on and the young boy could at least swallow the substance but vomit it out until when he 'graduated' and could drink a whole bottle.

In 1974, he joined Lenana High School and there he met a group of his kind whom he joined in drinking. "By the time I was in form two, I could quaff two to three bottles. However, the boys could not drinki cheap beer and they used to rubbish it away as 'for the failures'.

Over the holidays, ogot continued his hide and seek game with hsi father. When he did not succeed, he would steal money from either of his parents.

"By the end of the holiday, I had about Shs. 1000 and dad would top it up with Shs 2000, which was a lot of money by then. While in Form three, I would gobble about seven to eight bottles of beer. I had become a gentleman!" he reminices.

Together with a group of his friends, they hel a meeting and decided that such an amount was to be spent in just one sitting. "Here, we swallowed our pride of not to take cheap beer like Changaa and decided to do it with the slogan 'Let us drink Kenya and Build Kenya"

Even before the crowd takes a breath, ogot just releases another dossier. "We incorporated even prefects in our 'club' and the joy of drinking and smoking with the prefects made us become a government within the government."

They later started stealing small items like radios, shoes, and other personal belongings. They would take them to a 'mother' who owned the brewing den near the school. "So, mama would take the radios and look at them and then tell you, hii ni jik moja, tatu ama kumi," Ogot narrates. "One could continue taking mama's brew until she told you, radio imeiisha" 'You have 'consumed' your radio' and then start thinking of the next item you would pick and from who. Nevertheless, the boys were getting more and more addicted and the next thing they thought was brewing their own beer instead of taking whatever they had to mama.

This time, they got all the necessary ingridients and chose one corner of their calss to be the 'brewery'. Surprisingly, no teacher noticed about it despite the smell of the 'cooking' brew.

Ogot tells of a day when a jerrycan full of the brew almost blew off, releasing a hissing sound due to high temperature during fermentation. "We all looked at one another and thought, Kimeumana! But surpirsingly enough, the teacher never heard any sound; He finished his business and left the class."

What Ogot did not understand was only one thing about hsi teachers. "They had noses but they did not smell, eyes but they did not see and ears but did not hear."

After the brew was ready, nobody wanted to taste for the others and that is when Ogot asked the others, "Why do you think we have first formers?" So, several boys from form one were called and forced to take the brew. walking from side to side, Ogot narrates, "In chemistry, we were always taught that when you set an experiment, you monitor. So, after sometimes, we kept on inquiring from the oys how they were feeling, whether they had a headache or stomach ache and most of all whether they were having diarrhoea."

ogot carried with him the drinking habit to Aga Khan High School, where he enrolled in 1978 for higher education. "here I enrolled again in Daily Drinking Service; we used to call it DDS at a place called Njuguna's. he even goes ahead to describe how the place was like. "It was dirty and smelly. Flies used to invade one's face and mouth while drinking but this did not dter me from gobbling as many glasses as I could until my wallet went empty." The 'disease,' as ogot refers to it, went on until he could not stand being in class for many hours without a drink. He shifted to what he calls 'survival kits'".

As the saying goes, never judge a book by its cover, the humble and smart looking son of aprofessor was chosen the prefect.

Ogot being the leader of other notorious boys, some of whom were his counterparts, formed a group that they named the magnificent Svene (M7). "Students referred to us to as 'sirs'". Having led for only two months, ogot and his coleagues were demoted with immediate effect.

"At form six," he says, "we decided that we had seen too many people who never went to school and were millionaires. So, we thought that now that we had reached form six, by mathematics, we would be billionaires." But the long hand of the law could not give them a chance to continue destabilising security among the people. They found themselves having problems with the police and getting sent home to get their parents.

Ogot brushes his beard with his left hand and continues, "there was no way we could have gone home to get our parents. They were not entitled to kinow our 'evils' in school."

He explains that the group had gotten a bunch of mothers, some of whom sold them illicit alcohol, and they would present themselves in school as the real parents of the boys.

At some stage, "I swallowed pills and went into a coma. When my mother came to see me, I convinced her that I wanted to go back home," he narrates. In 2000, Ogot suffered a skin rash due to what he termed malnutrition, a deficiency caused by not eating properly and yet his life was spent in drinking dens. He visited a changaa den along Koinange Street and was so frustrated to be locked outside since customers feared his skin disease would infect them.

"That is when I though of my life. What had happened to me that was so bad that even people in dirty drinking dens feared to stay close to me despite my good family background and my learned parents? A person who entered an aeroplane and roamed the whole of India even if I never did what was expected of me? That is when I started my road to rehabilitation, he says.

At Asumbi Treatment centre in Homa Bay, ogot went through counselling and dedicated his life to the fight against drug absue, something he has been doing for the last six years and three weeks. "I pray twice a day and what I ask God every morning I wake up is, Oh, God help me not drink today. I have succeeded one day at a time by God's grace. So, when people say they have been born again, I think I am one of those who should be saying I am saved so many times for all the traps I evaded, he sighs. During his "career" in drinking, ogot syas that the longest job he ever had was at kenya Times Newspapers where he worked for two and a half years before he was sacked "due to what my employers called excessive drinking.". Today, Ogot, who has been donning T-shirts bearing drug absue messages for the past six years, runs his drug fighting firm called goinghomedotcom Trust based in Hurlingham, where he offers free services to those already addicted in order to rehabilitate them. At the Trust, he has a resource centre and a website on drug absue, www.goinghomekenya.org, "the first and only one of its kind, translated into diferent local languages," he says.

he also runs an audio visual library where he lends out tapes and CDs to rehabilitation centres, counselling and teaching institutions and youth groups.

ogot syas he always starts his new year on October 1, when he singlehandedly founded and launched the National Alcohol Awareness Month (NAAM), a programme that is run by all FM radio stations in Kenya in the fight against drug abuse. The father of four and husband to Eileen was born in Woolwich District of the United Kingdom and has no regrets of his past life. says he: "If I could not have experienced drugs, I would not be playing this role in the fight against drug absue." Just as he had been propagating in about 200 copies of his published works on drugs, Ogot still clings to his belief that alcoholism is a treatable disease if only it can be adressed. He urges those addicted to seek help through his email adress: goinghomedotcom@yahoo.com. "Alcohol does not cause alcoholism just like sugar does not cause diabetes," he maintains.

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