Schools which now have a smaller drugs problem can attribute this to following MBWA (Management By Walking Around) said the National Coordinator National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse (NACADA) Mr. Joseph Kaguthi during day one of the two day awareness visit to this Rift Valley town.

Speaking to Provincial and District Security Committees, Prisons Commandants and Heads of Departments, the Drugs Tsar decried the information gap between parents and children as well as that between teachers and children saying that "it is so wide, that we are worried."

Mr. James Ngumi from KIE caused laughter when he asked "what would you call your great grandfather in you own mother tongue?" He told them that as they were sitting there, they were going against their traditions. This was because "right now you look cultured. I say cultured because you are not offending anybody. So if someone walked in now wearing skins, ochre and so on you would say not cultured. But if you were transported back to their time with your suit they would also say you are not cultured."

Thus he continued every generation had its own culture which will make it grow up and look different from us. But they will still carry certain traditions from us.

Ngumi pointed out that children learn languages by listening to those around them so any language, which they constantly hear but what else were they picking up which one could not see? This then was incidental learning from the social environment - from the parents. Do they eat with their fingers or fight over ugali (cake-like Kenyan staple meal made with maize or millet). So when they see the father relaxing with a pipe the father does not need to tell them to smoke. They know that when they grow up and reach a certain age they will smoke. Thus when they see people taking bhang (cannabis sativa), alcohol and cigarettes they too know that when they attain a certain age they will do.

Therefore what you do he opined is determined by what people do and have in that environment and where a child has grown and learned that formal and incidental learning this child then becomes a product of that environment.

We will keep on blaming our children but it is us who give them that physical environment which has certain things in it, which they can learn. "Therefore if you avail cigarettes etc. in your house, they are not learning formally, they are learning informally." How can you tell a child for example not to speak your language in the house when all the rest of you are speaking this language? It is the same with addictions like smoking, when you tell the child not to do the same, yet they observe you doing.

Mr. Ngumi noted that kids were very innocent so a lot depended on the input they got from the environment we give them where they learn formally and informally.

To show how important environment was on children he gave the example of how you could hear people commenting "he smokes? But he is in such and such a school. No wonder he smokes." Even worse were some of the things children would innocently imitate. "One time you remember there were two robbers wacucu and wanugu. At one point children were going around saying 'I'm wacucu. I'm wanagu." They were probably admiring these daring robbers because the country probably was admiring them too."

There was also no communication between the students and teachers. When students wanted to pass over some information to teachers sometimes concerning drugs being sold in the kiosks around their schools, or that some school workmen or even teachers were peddling drugs there was absolutely no channel of communication to address these burning issues.

At this point the National Coordinators driver who had not been to Eldoret before returned with a package of glue, bhang, and valium. The glue had been bought of a street kid, the bhang from a peddler and the Valium from a chemist without a prescription. Kaguthi pointed out to the stunned audience that if they did their jobs properly this threat would not be there. He urged them to "take this issue seriously."

Any public officer who refused to enforce the law because he wanted to be popular was the worst enemy of the State the NACADA Boss admonished. Furthermore, "if you are an HOD (Head Of Department) and need 'Roche 5' to sleep, you are sick. Go to a hospital."