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Story & Pix by David Ogot © 2003

"I am not going to stand up here and tell you what to do and what not to do, whether to drinkalcohol, smoke bhangi or chew miraa (khat)" began this writer as he began talking to the large sea of faces listening intently to him.

At the same time I have only come to talk to one kind of person here. That is the one person who will take in what I am saying and get mys message.

Ogot of goinghomedotcom was speaking at a drug sensitisation seminar at Nyangua Secondary School in Kiritiri, Mbeere District on Saturday 4th. of October 2003, at a function organised by the Office of the National Coordinator, National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse (NACADA).

The reason is that all of you can do anything you want anytime with anybody you want and no one can really stop you. Not the teachers, not the D.C, not the headmaster not even your parents.

In fact even now if you are to hang yourself, you can use the flag pole here and there is a rope and hang yourself, I won't bother to stop you. At the end of the day I will still go home, have my supper and sleep very well.

Even you own mother's will only cry but at the end of the day when you are being buried, they will not kill themselves and enter the grave with you. No, no! You will be buried alone. You came into this world alone and you will leave alone.

So the best thing you can do for yourself is to look after yourself, for nobody cares about you except you. Know why you do what you are doing, whether it is smoking or drinking alcohol, ask yourself, 'why am I doing this? What benefits am I getting out of it? I'm I doing it just because people are saying I should do it? My friends are saying I should do it? No!

But if you are going to do things just because your peers pressurise you into doing them, and you can't think for yourself, then you might as well hang yourself. And in fact in respect of the flag don't as I said earlier hang your self on the flag pole, but take the rope and choose a tree instead. there are many in this compound.

No I am not going to tell you what to do. Instead I am going to tell you a little story. A story of what I did. A story of how I started smoking cigarettes, and tasted alcohol in form one, so that I could become a tough guy and impress the girls.

This impression that girls only went for tough guys and tough guys smoke and drank came from the movies and the magazines where all the tough guys smoke and drank alcohol.

Ogot took the through this apparently harmless and innocent beginning to the long and tortous trail spanning 27 years, of hell on earth as he became a full blown alcoholic and how the alcohol wrecked his life, his family and almost killed him.

He finished by advising them that their lives were in their hands, and they held the key to which direction it took. He reminded them that you could not tell if you were alcoholic or not until you started drinking and by the time you did and realsised you had a problem if indeed you did realise there was a problem before the alcohol killed you, you were so far gone that you would have already experienced 'hell on earth!'

"I am seeing so many of the questions you are asking are, 'but why can't I drink?' or 'if I stop smoking bhang I won't be able to study well' even 'but what is wrong with takong alcohol since it is legal?'

All these questions show is that you don't know why you are taking some of these drugs or you are taking them due to false beliefs or because everyone is doing so. So it is like you are trying to convince youself that it is alright to take them. Why should you need to convince yourself? If it is OK to them it is OK. But if that little voice is niggling there at the back of your mind, listen to it. It is right.

When you were asked how many of you have tried smoking, alcohol and even bhang, many of you raised your hands and this is good for you are being honest. And when you are honest, you are able to learn and that is the only way you will be able to help yourselves. When you are honest you are really interested in knowing about drugs and this is the only way you will get to know what is true and what are misperceptions often held by your peers.

But if at the end of the day you still want to try it for yourself, as I have said earlier nobody, can stop you. But i have already done it all for you. However if you want to go through it all again and try it for yourself to prove whether I am right or wrong, go ahead. At the end of the day it is your life.

And if you survive being maimed, injured, messing up your education, getting pregnant, being jailed, being thrown out of school and you survive until the day you actually realise you are killing yourself and you stop, one day then if you are this lucky, then you will come back here to your old school and tell them that '20 years ago I heard another man hear talking about the road I would travel but I did not hear...'

I had to go back to my old school Lenana, in Nairobi and tell them this last year, so the choice really is yours, because its your life and at the end of the day, it's only you who cares about you!.

The seminar was attended by 16 secondary schools with a total of 1,922 students, and five primary schools with a total 122 students. A total of 91 teachers attended while the overall total of students who turned up for the occasion were a whopping 2,034

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