It was her sixth time in rehab. All
the previous sessions had ended with her rebounding. But her family remained
dogged in finding a solution. U-turn for Christ in Kisii, was the last port of
call. If it didn’t work, maybe then rehab wasn’t for her, maybe a lifetime of drugs
was the fate she was condemned to.
She didn’t want to come to Kisii.
The name made her stomach recoil in distaste. But her parents would not have
any of it. They dragged her into the car, her screaming and making noises and
drove her to Kisii, Kenyenya. A place so forgotten, so distant, the first of
men might have walked there.
Her journey with drugs begins with
experimenting. Cigarettes were the first to clog her virgin lungs. She was around seventeen at the time. Spurred
by reggae music and iconoclasm, she tried weed. Marijuana grabbed her by the
waist and cast a bewitching spell. She would be addicted to weed for the
longest time. Even after she’d cast aside all the drugs, weed remained behind.
A little echo from days gone. Asking her to turn back for more, and more and
more.
After her twentieth birthday, she
left for the states. Alcohol had found home in her. A small problem. In the
states, you have to be twenty-one and above to buy alcohol. She did not have a
year to wait. Her insides were yearning for booze, a sucking thirst which
couldn’t be filled with anything. In the US you can’t bribe your way to booze,
if you’re underage, you’re on. It’s not like in Kenyan night clubs which
specify that you have to be over twenty-one, but should you tap the bouncer
with two hundred bob, he will gladly let you in. Tapping your shoulders and
calling you, “boss.”
To solve this little alcohol
problem, she would buy over the counter prescriptions with over 80% alcohol content
in them. A few of those pills washed down with water and she would be on
another planet. Away from humanity. Distant from all the noise. Just her,
drifting like a phantom.
The father to her kid introduced her
to heroin. He was a neighbour at home, ran into him on her evening walks. They
became friends. One time there’s a conflict between their families. I can’t
imagine what they could have been fighting about. Two families’ in an upmarket
neighbourhood going at each other. This made them closer though, (our heroine
and her heroine smoking baby daddy.) Saw what I did?
As it goes, one thing led to another
and bup! They were parents. I like how folks use that saying. It’s escapism at
it’s best. It’s made to appear like nobody is in control of anything. Stuff
just spirals out of control like a sinking ship. Come on folks, stuff just
doesn’t happen, you make it happen.
Anyway, there she was, twenty-one, a
drug addict, a single mother. Talk of life giving you lemons but making
lemonade is practically impossible. Motherhood breathing down her neck, she
plunged into mogoka and cigarettes.
“It’s been up and down.” She says, a
weak sigh escaping from her darkened lips. If you’re keen, you can see the
alcohol that had been there. The mogoka, the cigarettes, the heroine and many
more.
How much does your child mean to
you?
“Oh my God, he’s everything. I love
him so much. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life, just being a mum to
him. I’ve wasted so much of that during my addiction and I feel so sad about
it. I took it in vain, having him. Drugs can really mess you up. Now that I am
away from him, I feel the separation. You never know what you got till it’s
gone.”
I thought of giving him up for
adoption at one point. But my parents were strongly against it. They adopted me
and my twin sister by the way. They run orphanages. They found it to be absurd.
Giving up their grandson yet they’re taking in kids every day.”
She has no idea what happened to her
own biological parents. The mum died while they were toddlers. No idea about
her father. Adopted while they were 18 months old. Originally, she’s from
Kiambu. And that’s all she knows about her past, the rest is all fog. A dark
blanket which won’t go away. In rehab, she’s been thinking of her past, her
heritage, her parents. She wishes to follow up on them when she leaves.
On her arms are scars. She’s tried
suicide before, death ignored her. She dreads the day her son might ask about the
marks. But she treasures them as a testament to the life she’s been through. A
reminder of the dark winters and to serve as a lesson to any who contemplates
going down such a road.
Three months remain on her
programme. She will be out by Christmas. This fills her with gladness. There’s
no plan of what happens when she gets out. She wants to be involved in God’s
work. She wants to get married at some point. She wants to be a good mother to
her son. She also hopes to go back to campus, a place where she spent two weeks
before drugs grabbed her by the neck and pulled her away.
She’s an accident of dreams and a
troubled life. A young girl who’s seen too much. I left as evening approached.
She was feeling her hands for blisters.
P.s. A small announcement, I won’t
be posting here as much. I have been experimenting on other writing projects and they’re
swallowing a lot of my time. Plus, I am campus folk, I need to take care of that
GPA. If anything comes up, I’ll let you know. Salute.
This is a wonderful piece. It has both the dark and the beautiful lighted of the days in this young woman's life. Life has ups and down but there is always a silver lining to it. Thank you and continue to write.
ReplyDeleteCheers for reading. To more reading
DeleteInsightful.Drug abuse wastes a lot of young people's lives.
ReplyDeleteCertainly man... Drug abuse is a path to ruin.
Delete