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"Kenya Airways plane slams into heart of Nairobi, Kenya's capital: all 300 aboard and thousands on the ground feared dead in worst aviation disaster on the African continent, possibly in all aviation history."

Imagine this headline and it's variations, plastered on the front pages of all the papers in this country as well as graphic footage on all the television stations? Imagine the shock, flags at half-mast, national mourning. Investigations as to how this had been allowed to come about.

Or what about another media report school bus crashes off escarpment killing all 180 students on board. "News reports indicate that the 180 students drawn from primary schools from all over Kenya to give their views on drug abuse in Nairobi, were on their way to Nakuru as part of their country-wide awareness tour on alcohol and other drugs, when their bus plunged off the escarpment killing all the children and the four adults including the driver on board."

What would you feel at the loss of so many innocent young lives? Pure souls who had set out on such a noble mission to save lives through information on the scourge of alcohol and other drugs. Young, unsullied hearts lost to their parents and the nation forever, tragically more.

Then as the sorrow settled on Kenyans like a dark, impenetrable, wet, cold fog, it would slowly begin to be dissipated by the collective, searing heat of anger as all and sundry ask ed "why? How had this disaster been allowed to happen?"

This mass outrage would stem from the fact that these tragedies had occurred because the pilot of the plane or the driver of the bus had been drunk.

Not an accident such as a mechanical fault, but someone who was not fit to be in the position of being responsible for those machines as well as all the passengers onboard had been allowed to do so.

Someone else's drinking had caused thousands to loose loved ones. Someone's drinking had led to a whole nation going into mourning. This whole tragedy need not have happened. It was not an accident. So someone had to pay.

Is this kind of gruesome, horrific scenario what we are going to need to bring us to our senses over the drug alcohol? Already alcohol is cutting huge swathes of destruction and pain through Kenyan society, and yet families grit their teeth and suffer in silent shame, preferring to keep this suffering to themselves due to stigma surrounding the disease of alcoholism.

Almost every single day I talk to families who have an alcoholic significant other. Stories of pain and suffering, frustration and despair. All so different yet all so familiar.

But after only one hour, one hour I can literally see their shoulders straighten up as if from having an invisible but crushing burden lifted off of them. Almost all exclaim, "if only I had known this ten years ago! You mean I have been suffering needlessly all this time? How much money and time we have wasted."

I have heard this sentiment countless times and yet it never ceases to sorely hurt me. Why do we allow our fellow human beings to suffer needless pain like this when we in the media can easily relieve this anguish? Indeed not only can we reduce it drastically but at comparatively negligible costs.

The Kenyan media can in one month, one month knock down the wall of ignorance, denial and shame that surrounds the disease of alcoholism. In one month the media working in concert can do more about informing the public that alcoholism is a disease and that it is treatable than has been done in the 40 years since independence.

In one month the whole country can be talking about the drug alcohol and the disease of alcoholism constructively with a view to reducing the carnage alcohol wreaks among us.

For unbeknown to most Kenyans, they are already discussing alcohol, but in denial and ignorance. For when we talk as a nation about rising HIV/AIDS figures we are talking about alcohol.

When we talk about corruption, we are talking about alcohol with a whole Mafia consisting of police; provincial administration, administration police and others who abet and benefit indeed depend on the illicit brew trade.

International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), Coalition of Women Against Violence (CoVAW) who are in the middle of a 16 day sensitisation on domestic violence, among other organisations, can all attest to the key role played by alcohol in cases of domestic violence.

Our young people especially and the great unrest and upheavals being experienced with them in homes and schools around the country owe a great deal of this behaviour to the influence of alcohol.

A huge chunk of the crimes, road accidents, unplanned pregnancies, rapes, child abuse, spousal abuse, absenteeism, suicides, neglected households, school drop-out rates all happen as a result of uncurbed and uninformed alcohol consumption.

Just as an alcoholic's enabler helps them continue drinking before becoming a co-dependent or co-alcoholic, so too the Kenyan media. It first enables Kenyans to indulge their unhealthy, uninformed consumption of alcohol before becoming their co-alcoholic as they too show symptoms of the disease similar to the alcoholic.

Classically they ooze denial from all their pores. The Kenyan media will churn out dozens of articles, footage and radio programmes concerning illicit brews and arrests and demonstration's concerning the same. Law enforcement issues as they pertain to illicit brews.

Turn to beer and other legal spirits and wines and - silence! You run into the grim, forbidding and towering wall of denial. Is it fear of losing our advertisers who daily fill our pages and airwaves with enticing advertisements seducing Kenyans to drink, drink and be merry?

Or is it that some of these stories touch too close to home, by making those of us in the media look closely at our own drinking habits, realising as we do, that we do not like what we see? Denial here is so obviously manifested in the simple instruction by the editor - "kill that story."

Unfortunately that seemingly benign instruction kills more than a story; it kills Kenyans. Thousands of them every year. Citizens who die never having known they were suffering from a disease which though, chronic and progressive was completely treatable.

Deaths which are wrongly attributed to accidents, mishaps, or illness yet just by slightly more probing underneath the reason listed on the death certificate the root cause would easily be seen as unhealthy and ignorant relationship with alcohol.

Even in cases where the drug alcohol was the obvious factor resulting in death of the victim, many physician's, assuming they are aware in the first place that alcoholism is a disease, will list a different cause of death in order to save the family needless "shame."

This situation with the Kenyan media troubles me greatly, in the face of the suffering I hear as I counsel families. For to me being a journalist has always meant being part of a noble profession, championing the rights of the downtrodden, and the disenfranchised.

Journalism to me has always been about being the voice of the voiceless. Taking the side of the underdog, who has right and truth on his side, but little else going for him. Educating.

Being a journalist to me in it's most basic form has always meant, that you were part of the rules of life that allowed people to go to be and sleep soundly in the knowledge that things were as they should be. That if somebody forgot the rules, journalists would be there to remind them.

The media could alleviate suffering of humanity. So what has gone wrong in Kenya? Why can't we stop this needless suffering caused by alcohol? Do we lack the knowledge that alcohol, even beer is a drug capable of causing great misery, addiction and death?

Recently on October 1, I celebrated three years since I landed at the front step of Asumbi Treatment Center. I analysed how my recovery had been coming along since, (People On Sunday, October 9, 2003 "Taking stock of 3 years of recovery.") I concluded this article thus: "so what does my report card have to say for the last three years? Simply this "making good progress, but definitely room for further improvement." And that is as it should be - milele." (Forever.)

Now if I were to give the Kenyan media a report card for the past three years, I would have to say "very intelligent and capable, but makes no effort in class. Needs to take their work seriously next year so as to avoid repeating this class - again!"

Not only have the Kenyan media failed themselves, and the nation, they have failed the ideals of the profession. A co-alcoholic is the person closest to the alcoholic and thus as good a description as any, for the media

For those in the media have spouses, relatives, children, friends or know someone who is an alcoholic. Alternatively they themselves are at some stage of the disease, for alcoholism cuts across both sexes, all ages, tribes, races, backgrounds and is definitely no respecter of one's profession.

The media enables Kenyans to keep on medicating themselves senseless, with the constant barrage of messages they carry from the manufacturers of these alcoholic beverages.

Rugby, pool tournaments, concerts as well as 'the-more-you-drink-the-more-chances-of-winning' competitions are all carried enticingly in the media with no concerns to the silent screams for help from the voiceless.

This sea of upturned desperate faces turned pleadingly to members of the Fourth Estate, their red wide open maws, opening and closing in gasping pain akin to landed fish, mere cannon fodder for the booze traders. Aided and abetted by the media.

But all this can change overnight. Media owners just have to set policy. Media owners have to listen to the cry of the people. Media owners are not an island unto themselves. These are your countrymen and women out there.

More importantly there is one important fact you should be aware of, and that is that you will have to do the right thing eventually. For very soon now the casualties are going to pile up higher and faster than we can bury them.

The media too will not be spared merely because we are journalists. When these statistics start to include our children, or brothers, sisters, auntie's, fathers, mothers is that when we will break the shackles of denial and co-alcoholism?

Why when we finally do it should we shoulder the collective curse of a nation as the whole country wails "I wish they had told us this ten years ago. We have wasted so much time and money! We have needlessly suffered so much! These people cannot be human!"

The curse of several generations is a burden I would not like to carry with me to the grave, nor is it an abomination I would wish on anybody. But we in the media are wishing it upon ourselves.

If it is true that most print journalists would love to have a long running column, I then would be an exception to the rule. For I would like to end this column one day. Week after week asking Kenyans to wake up to the dangers inherent in casual alcohol consumption only to see them drinking with more abandon.

I pray for the day, they do come out of hibernation to the grim reality. When my Editor will proudly say, "we've done it, they have woken up 'kill that column!' it has become redundant."

But until that day, I pray for the Kenyan media to end the suffering. To try just one month of a continuous, accurate, awareness blitz. To feel the joy of not only having power to alleviate the suffering of a fellow human being but to use that power to do so and thus assert your 'humanness.'

As for you who are reading my article on this Sunday morning, I ask you to take one minute to pray for all the suffering alcoholic's and their families out there. To pray that today at least one alcoholic somewhere in our great Republic will begin their journey of recovery.

David Ogot is a freelance journalist/producer with personal experience in alcoholism. He can be reached at goinghomedotcom@yahoo.com Website: www.goinghomekenya.org

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