Testimonies of drug abusers
Friday, 10th October, 2008
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Faridah Babirye was arrested at Ggaba with marijuana on August 7, 2007
By Ben Okiror
WHEN his cousin was admitted to the intensive care unit for alcohol abuse,
Derrick Okello finally gave up marijuana. But it took 12 months of
rehabilitation for him to come out of the four-year love affair with the “weed”
that had earlier seen him kicked out of school.
Now Okello is overseeing the learning centre at Fresh Start Drug and Alcohol
Rehabilitation Centre in Kikaaya-Kyebando, and plans to join Bible school next.
“When I heard that my cousina, with whom I had lived in the UK for eight years
was in ICU because of drinking, I decided to quit smoking marijuana,” he said.
After two months, Okello decided to go to Fresh Start. “My aunties had almost
brought me here in 2004 but I refused. This time I decided to get back to God.”
Indeed it took God for the 23-year-old to learn to live under authority.
His nine-year stay in the US with his mother earlier on in his life, had been
punctuated by juvenile court appearances and jail when he turned 18. He joined
university but had to drop out after just two months and got involved with drug
addicts and thugs, who were always hunted by the Police. His mother had to keep
bailing him out of jail.
Returning to Uganda in 2004, Okello joined Kabojja SS in Senior Five. But only
two terms later, he was caught with a marijuana stick and expelled.
After Kabojja, he joined Ntinda View College but before he could complete his
S.6, he was expelled for insubordination. He immediately resumed his old habit
that was only disrupted by the news of his cousin’s hospitalisation.
By Lydia Namubiru
Tom (not real name), 19 is battling a drug problem that started about seven
years ago.
“I was in P.7 when I had my first pull of marijuana (weed). A friend from our
neighbourhood gave it to me,” he reveals. He continued to have a pull every now
and then whenever the friend availed it. Then he joined a boarding school in
S.1. “I had no access to weed in school but I was introduced to kuber.”
He picked other habits like drinking alcohol from the clique that introduced
him to kuber. In S.3 he was expelled for insubordination after refusing to take
a teacher’s punishment.
He then joined a school in Ntinda. “Here weed was almost free! It was easy for
students to get out of school and buy weed, liquor, kuber and the rest. Stuff
was just flowing,” Tom claims.
He went back to the smoking weed. “Soon it could not get me high anymore so I
started combining it with kuber,” he narrates. Even that combination ceased to
be intoxicating enough so he added liquor to the mix. His head eventually got
too stubborn for even that apparently lethal mixture so he dropped it and
started sniffing jet fuel. “My friends warned me that jet fuel would kill me so
I went back to the earlier mix, but added cigarettes.”
Inevitably this drug use reflected in his lack of discipline. His parents got
suspicious and approached numerous teachers asking them to monitor him closely.
That was about the time he sat for his O’levels.
He refused to go back to the Ntinda school for A’levels and chose to one in
Iganga. He formed a clique with other indisciplined students and introduced
them to kuber, as they, in turn, influenced him into drinking crude brew known
as kalodo, made from sugarcane.
Two terms later, the group led a strike in which they tried to burn down a
building. “We were just helping out this guy who had beef (problems) with a
teacher. When he was caught, he gave in our names yet the understanding had
been that he would go down alone.”
The clique was detained by police for a week. “In jail, I lied to the other
prisoners that the guy had framed us. I watched him being beaten until he
bled,” Tom remembers.
After a week, his parents bailed him out. “I lied to my mother about the strike
but when my dad came he rigourously interrogated me. He took a baton from a
police man and hit my joints to force me to tell the truth. However, I had
taken some kuber before leaving the cell so I did not feel much pain.”
Tom’s parents kept him in isolation for about three months and eventually took
him to Butabika Hospital for counseling and treatment. He now resists the urge
to take drugs by taking strong brands of alcohol.
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