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I still going strong, sober one day at a time yet all around me is total madness. Kids swallowing mini-packs like mad 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, there is an air of desperation today which we did not have then. These kids today are drinking in stubborn despair; the desperate effort to block out the reality all around them which appears hopeless.

I drank with because it made me feel good and with hope. Life was good and I was going places, I was going to make the most of it and go far. I had dreams, plans, and ideas! But in today’s drinking I only sense surrender. Surrender by the parents and hopelessness and despair, and surrender from the kids hopelessness and despair!

These people are not alive, its 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, 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.

Music is said reflects the ideals, aspirations as well as the frustrations of the generation and if this were what they are singing about then they are clearly despaired. For it is a cry for help, yet nobody seems to be hearing.

I sometimes 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 be probably late stage alcoholics and that is when they will know the true meaning of despair and hopelessness. Many of them of course will die or be maimed for life in countless accidents and mishaps.

The parents don't say anything now, yet they are already suffering now with kids refusing to go to school, disappearing at all hours and soon if not already items disappearing from the house.

Yet everybody seems trapped and unable to do anything, as the alcoholic beverage manufactures continue advertising finding newer ways to target the youth, the government 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? After all if they don’t want to listen, it's their problem why should I force them to listen? They are too many I am only one person what's the point?

Then there is the attitude of every body including in many agencies that are supposed to be creating this awareness. You find people working here mouth the word alcoholic but through their actions you can see deep down in their guts they feel you are just some morally weak person, with no will power. In other words alcoholism to them is no more a disease than stealing.

So they just give lip-service to the idea while they pretend to humour you and thus end up piling another load on your already breaking back all lending weight to the good idea of quitting? 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 to rehab came out 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.

Here he was calling he had got a job. He said it wasn't much but it was a start. With the joy I could 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.

I wanted people to listen when I talked and realize miraculously that I was right and that pombe was bad and that they should quit. That kids would realise that they were on a one way road. I was not a saviour of Kenyan children, I was an alcoholic. A simple alcoholic in recovery.

All I could hope to do was keep on telling my story wherever I had the chance and always hope 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 was one person at a time heard. And if they didn't, well the day was over, well spent. And tomorrow would be another day. One day at a time.

David Ogot
Recovering alcoholic
14.08.03
Nairobi

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