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I am still going strong, sober one-day-at-a-time in this my sixth glorious sober, year. After 27 years of drinking most of it mad, drinking of an alcoholic as I raced through the various stages of alcoholism, I finally got sober by the grace of God. Yet all around me is total madness. Kids swallowing alcohol like crazed things, parents who are completely mum about it, and the binge drinking culture, which seems to have finally caught up with Kenyan youth, as they seem determined to drink themselves to death.
It all looks so familiar to my scene 30 years ago and yet somehow so different, for there seems to exist in the Kenyan underage drinker and drinking youth, an air of desperation today which we did not have then. These kids today are drinking in what I can only describe as stubborn despair; a desperate effort to block out the reality all around them in which all appears hopeless.
I drank in my time because it made me feel good and full of hope. Life was good and I was going places, I was going to make the most of it, I was going far. I had dreams, plans, and ideas! But in today’s drinking I only sense surrender. Surrender by the parents and hopelessness and despair faced as they are by the seemingly insurmountable hurdle of getting their kids to quit killing their dreams with liquor. Surrender from the youth, hopelessness and despair as they drink themselves to oblivion.
These young boys and girls, men and women are not alive, it’s like they are feeling so much pain that the only way out is to numb their senses completely. There are no hopes no dreams no plans in these kids.
Even their music sends a message of desperation. They sing about drinking, wakaring (getting high), parting, touching girls, and fingering girls, sex and more drinking. It as if the more they party, and blot out reality with alcohol maybe it will all come true and they will find life can be one long endless party. The girls too feature dancing lasciviously ‘quarter-dressed’ as bling-bling or accessories draped on their male counterparts.
Music it is said reflects the ideals, aspirations as well as the frustrations of the concerned generation and if this is what our youth are singing about then they have obviously despaired. It is clearly a cry for help, yet equally clear is the fact that nobody seems to be listening to these anguished wails.
Non of them realize, just as I did not when I started off drinking in another century in fact another millennium way back in 1974 while in form one, that the earlier one starts consuming alcohol before your brain is even fully formed at about 21 years of age the easier it was to get into problems with alcohol use and even other drug use.
The other day at the recently concluded Chaguo La Teeneez (CHAT) awards which were sponsored by the soft drink brand Fanta I watched two young men alight from a matatu (chaotic mini-van public service transport) at the bus stop carrying and swigging from open bottles of beer in broad daylight. They staggered off on the road to the restaurant where the event was to be held. If they were even aware that the event was meant to be a family alcohol-free event then it obviously meant nothing to them.
I drove into the nearby Uchumi supermarket parking lot and got out to watch them stagger in bumping with uncoordinated gait into parked cars as they made a beeline for the toilets. Shortly thereafter they headed off to the venue. The time was 9.30 in the morning. Yet nobody said anything, most seemed not to notice. In short this display seemed going by the reaction it elicited from the adults, to be as normal as any other activity that was going on.
These are the exact kind of scenes which sometimes cause me to wake up enveloped in a blanket of despair as I wonder is it worth it all? I mean everyday going out to pass the message, that there is hope, while all around me I see alcoholics being created as if from a demonic factory gone haywire.
For all these kids in a decade or so will probably be late stage alcoholics at which time they will discover the true meaning of despair and hopelessness. Many of them of course will die or be maimed for life in countless accidents and mishaps long before this.
Meanwhile the parents are not saying anything now, yet they are already suffering horribly with kids refusing to go to school, disappearing at all hours and sooner rather than later items too will start vanishing from the house.
Yet through all this everybody seems trapped and unable to do anything, as the alcoholic beverage manufacturer’s continue advertising finding newer ways to target Kenyans to drink more, the government appearing completely mum, it all looks just so hopeless and pointless.
Why should I bother? After all I have stopped drinking? Why don't I continue working on staying sober and educate my family? Surely if everybody else doesn’t want to listen, it's their problem why should I try and force them to listen? They are so many and I am only one person what's the point?
Coupled to this is the attitude of many of our citizens, found too in many of the agencies that are supposed to be creating this awareness. You find people working here merely mouth the word "alcoholic" but if their actions are put to greater scrutiny it reveals that deep down in their guts they feel the alcoholic (addict) is just some morally weak person, with no will power – a sinner. In other words alcoholism to them is no more a disease than bad driving.
So they just give lip-service to the disease concept while pretending to humour me and thus end up piling another load stigma, on my already breaking back all lending weight to the good idea of quitting this advocacy business? Who am I to try and save the world?
Then I get a call from someone I had talked to last year and who had gone on to rehab completed and had been job hunting for months and months. There had been no offers and there were times he would call me at night frustrated, being hassled by relatives and saying he felt like giving up and going back to drink.
Now here he was calling bursting with excitement - he had got a job. He said it wasn't much but it was a start. With the joy I hear in his voice, the gloom lifts like a fog and disappears. My overburdened back straightens and I realise that like a typical alcoholic I wanted everything to go my way and to do so quickly.
I wanted people to listen when I talked or read my articles and realize miraculously that everything I said made sense and that pombe (booze) was bad for young people and that they should quit. That these youngsters would realise that they were on a one way road to hell on earth. I was not a saviour of Kenyan children, I was an alcoholic. Just a simple alcoholic in recovery.
All I could hope to do was keep on telling my story wherever I had the chance always hoping that one person heard. Just one, like my friend who had heard. That was the best I could do.
Just like I had to go through the rest of my life one-day-at-a-time, all I could hope for was that one-person-at-a-time heard. And if they didn't, well the day was over, I had done my part so well spent. And tomorrow would be another day. One day at a time. But tomorrow was in the future, yesterday was dead and gone, so just for today, I would tell my story one more time for it is only of today that I am certain that God has given me a fresh sheet to paint my life on for someone else to benefit from.
David Ogot,
NAIROBI.
9-05-2006
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