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The ongoing saga at Nyeri High School and other schools round the country should serve to bring to the fore the fact that we are at a cross-roads over the use of alcohol and other drugs in schools and the direction we choose now will determine future outcomes.
It is at this same school that several prefects were locked in their studies and burnt to death in a set of gruesome murders that shocked the nation a few years back. But denial ruled and we hastily buried the issue in the depths of our collective psyche.
Then came the horrific copy-cat fire-setting in Kyanguli High resulting in a high number of deaths with the alleged culprits still in court over the issue.
There were the raids on girls schools by neighbouring boys schools culminating in mass rape of the girls. Again we stoically held the issue under the roiling waters of denial, even though it too was screaming, kicking and gasping for the life-giving air of an honest hearing, until it too died.
All over the country there is unrest in schools, and no matter how much we seek to avoid dealing with this issue it will not go away and though there are other reasons like lack of lines of communication between students and those who run these institutions, it is time Kenyan parents woke up to the fact their children are using alcohol and other drugs.
Nothing has changed from my school days in the early to late '70's in Lenana and later Aga Khan High Schools except that the situation is now at a crisis point, we have reached the point of no return where parents will ignore this situation at their and their children's own peril.
As a recovering alcoholic, who has talked to thousands of students in schools all over Kenya as well as counseling many who are addicted as including their parents, I have come to one tragic conclusion, Kenyan parents are a big part of the alcohol and other drug use problem of their children that we are today saddled with in schools.
The kids are on their own with no guidance whatsoever from the adults, what little there is, is too little, too late, and given from such a moral high ground as to be of little use.
Our Kenyan youth like youth all over the world are curious as they become adolescents, they want to experiment and try out things for themselves. They have suddenly realised that parents whom they have always considered to be little gods who knew everything, in reality don't know everything.
They are testing their wings, and seeing how it feels to be less dependent and clinging on their parents all the time. It is a period of forging new friendships and seeking, often-time desperately to be accepted by their peers, whose opinion by this time is many times of more value than that of parents, teachers or any other adults on many subjects or issues.
It is a time of confusion as they experience physical and emotional changes, all part of adolescence, of trying to assert oneself and adjust to an awareness of an ever-increasing sexuality and how to socialise and relate with members of the opposite sex.
Meanwhile we as parents prime them with unbridled access to all kinds of messages, from alcohol, tobacco and soft porn and even hard pornography. They watch T.V., they read newspapers and most of all they watch us - and what a show we put on for them.
Then thus fully charged, and saturated with all these messages, admonishing them to drink, drink, drink alcohol, smoke and have sex with as many partners as possible, and if girls don't agree rape them as even big shots do this and get away with it, we unleash them on their equally 'Pavloved' peers and true to form they respond accordingly.
Yet all the while any attempts to point out to the parents that their kids have a problem leads to vehement, vitriolic outbursts frequently to the point of profanity. This will not help, the evidence is there.
Teachers too will usually just take the easy way out and expel any student found taking drugs. This is not helping the student nor solving the problem, but merely exporting it. What happens to the student when headmasters run out of schools to expel them to, schools that will accept them?
Each student who takes alcohol or other drugs, does so for a reason or set of circumstances unique to themselves. These range from peer pressure, to misinformation or false beliefs, to problems at home, experimentation or just curiosity.
This is what the head-teacher and other teachers have to firstly find out, and then use the most effective manner to get them to see how continued use is harmful to their lives as a whole. They have to put into place comprehensive and continuous programmes that give information on drugs and the overall effects they have on ones life.
Ultimately they have to not only understand, but internalise that in dealing with an addict, they are dealing with a sick person, not a criminal or recalcitrant child who you simply sweep under the carpet by transferring or expelling hoping that somebody else will deal with the problem.
Parents too need to help the teachers out on this, when they are informed that their children are using drugs. Being emotional and shouting 'my child cannot do such a thing' does not help and merely enables the pupil to continue using their drug of choice.
Both parents and teachers should face one simple reality, unimpeded drug use is like a pregnancy. It will not go away or magically disappear, but just get bigger. Finally it will come to full term.
When this happens many thousands of wasted shillings, lost health and opportunities later you might be lucky and get a chance to salvage the now not-so-young-child by sending them to a rehabilitation center with it attendant costs.
But I would like to leave you with a general rule of thumb. For every recovering alcoholic or survivor (as we are better known, and which to my mind is a more apt description) like myself there are 10 dead and buried one. And that to me should be an extremely sobering thought.
David Ogot is a freelance journalist/producer who has personal experience with alcoholism. He can be reached at goinghomedotcom@yahoo.com Website: www.goinghomekenya.org
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