Kampala’s Drug Scene (Bonus) Guest Post: “Sugar is Bad for you” by Evelyn Masaba .

Dear readers of this blog.

The following story is based on an interview. In it a terrible tragedy wakes a young woman from her nightmare of drug addiction and loss of self. It is a difficult story to listen to and was even more difficult to write. But this record serves as an effort to bring attention to crack-heroin and its victims in Uganda.

Thank you for reading.

Evelyn Masaba

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AFFAIRS OF THE HEART. LORENA’s REBELLION.

My friends told me to stay away from him. I did not. He was in his third year at Uganda Christian University in Mukono when we met. I was visiting a friend at a hostel most people called Tripoli. At the time he, together with some friends, was going for drinks at a nearby shop. Quite tall and lanky his teeth shone white when he smiled. I thought he was sexy. A little skinny but still handsome.

When I asked, my friend who knew him, said he was called Fred. He was his final year but was with a group of friends who partied a lot. I did not care much. He had smiled and winked at me.

My parents have always had money but were strict on us ever since we were children.

As the last of three siblings, two girls and a boy I was the only one who got away with a few things. Our first born, my sister was fourteen years older than me. There was ten years between me and the boy I followed. I therefore grew up in a house full of adults. In my teens my sister married and moved away to America. Soon my brother followed her abroad in my last year of secondary school – starting a new life in the United Kingdom. So, it happened that when I started university I was home alone with my parents. My dad had retired from the civil service. My mother was a businesswoman. However, she was always around when I was growing up.

A few weeks on,  When I was getting something to eat with a classmate at a restaurant near campus there he was again with his friends. They were drinking beer at one of the shops and they seemed drunk. I had arrived at university from a Catholic single-girls school. It was the same single girls’ school I had studied at primary level. Was this how university life was? You leave class and start partying immediately after?

The first time he kissed me, I remember him smelling like herbs and when I asked him what that was, he said it was Mary Jane. I was naive, lived a very protected life, had never even tasted alcohol in all my life. He was my first kiss and later my first sexual encounter. I did not know what “Mary Jane” was, so I asked my roommate. She said it was marijuana.

A Dark Knight

One night he came to my room late at 3AM.

I had an exam the next day, so I was trying to do some early morning reading. Sheila*, my roommate had slept at her boyfriend’s hostel, so I was alone. He was really high and smelled funny and looked really dirty. He got into my room and just blacked out. The next morning, I went for my test and came back to find him and his friends in my room rolling weed and drinking, I didn’t like the way my room smelled but he was my boyfriend and I wanted him around

It’s strange how his being dangerous seemed even more attractive to me. I used to have dreams about him rescuing me from a lot of things. You could say I had read too many novels.

Whenever we would hang out, I would smoke some of the weed and found myself liking it. It was first hard the first time of course. It gave me nausea because of the smell and all the coughing but he taught me how to inhale it gently.  After a while I was doing it so well.

I just wanted to impress him.

That afternoon after the late-night visit, they gave me some weed to smoke but told me to smoke it gently since it was “high grade”. We all laughed but honestly, I don’t remember anything after that.

My roommate said she came back to find me on my bed looking like I was dosing but not sleeping. Fred was on the bed besides me while his friends were blacked out on the floor. She assumed we were high, picked her things and left.

I hung with him for a while and we started smoking together what I later learned was called, brown sugar. I even knew the dealers and would go purchase it from them. Sometimes I would smoke three sticks in a day, and it started to slowly affect my schoolwork. I missed one class, then two, then a whole month and finally I got expelled.

I never told my parents.  I  kept on partying and hanging with Fred and his friends but this time, it was me buying the alcohol and the drugs.

When I started running out of money, he would take some of the things in my room and sell them then buy us the drugs. My roommate got tired and moved out of the room.  Then the hostel kicked me out. That’s when I realized he didn’t have where to stay and we would party all night and then sleep on the balcony of the bars. The day I realized I had a serious problem was when I went to a restaurant to steal forks and sell them to buy drugs for an extra high.

He disappeared out of the blue.

The end and the beginning

When I was found I had fainted the trading center near my old hostel. I had been looking for him everywhere but could not find him.  One of the boda boda men who had taken me to my parent’s home on a couple of occasions recognized me and took me back home.

I was admitted for dehydration in the hospital later on that evening but when the doctor came back with the tests it turned out I was pregnant. I had never been so scared in my life. I dawned on me that I did not know where he was or who his family. My strict catholic parents had raised a good girl but here I was three months pregnant and addicted to drugs.

My father was the first to hear the news. He was shocked but very calm till the doctor told him he had noticed some drugs in my system. He walked away from my bedside.  He looked disappointed and sad at the same time. My heart broke at the sight of him like that.

My mother walked in and was told the news. She fainted.

I didn’t attend the burial, my father said it was better I stayed in Kampala as they buried my mother. At that time, I was going through what they call withdrawal. I wanted to leave the house and go buy some brown sugar to feel better. I was in pain, sweating and vomiting almost every minute. However, the security guard and maid were told not to allow me to go anywhere or see anyone.

My mother had been diagnosed with high blood pressure after the university called her about my expulsion.  The news in the hospital had been the last straw. She died immediately after collapsing in my hospital room.

That night, I wanted to kill myself. I was in pain physically and emotionally. I had killed my mother. My sweet mother who did everything to make sure I was happy. I would never see her smile again.

I looked for rat poison in the kitchen but didn’t find any. I then mixed jik (bleach) and washing powder (omo detergent) with water and chugged it down.

I don’t remember much after that.

I woke up a few days later in the hospital with my siblings glaring at me and father’s concerned face hovering over me. I had lost the baby. It had been the maid found me on the floor with foam on my lips.

A few months later Dad took me to Nairobi and checked me into a rehabilitation center. Three months there and I was well on my way to recovery but then I met another patient who was from a well to do family and could afford to sneak in some drugs into the facility. We became friends and would smoke some weed in the toilet.  You inhale then exhale into the toilet bowl so that the smoke doesn’t hover for long, but you have to put your head halfway into the bowl.

One night we stole some aspirin and crushed it then added it to the weed.

That was a very good high,  but we were caught since were too high to notice the night Supervisor walking into the bathroom. I was kicked out of the rehabilitation that very week and my father was not pleased. He was not angry, and he didn’t even yell or beat me. He just brought me back home and got me a counselor to talk to.

After almost a month in therapy I still wanted to get high. My sister made other arrangements. She proposed that I be taken to her former school’s Convent in the UK. Someone had told her how the nuns had discreetly helped a few friends’ relatives. Dad thought it was a good idea. So that is how I ended up in the convent filled with no-nonsense nuns under  the full watch of their house doctors and therapists.

The first few weeks were horrible. I was having pains again and would have done anything for any high that could take that pain away. In Nairobi I would have been  given a few painkillers to help with the pain but in this case,  there was nothing. I wanted to die, I begged for them to do it but they held me most nights when I cried and told me it would get better.

It did.

I started eating food and participating in the daily activities of the nuns. I also reconnected with  my family and spoke to them on the phone. I was allowed one call daily from the main phone in the main office. I love books, so I used to help Sister Theodora in the Library and once in a while I would be allowed access to the internet.

It was on one of  those days that I saw his Facebook page. I had not seen him in months. I had it in mind to send him a friendship request but remembered the therapist had told me to keep away from anything that triggers my addiction and Fred was the genesis of it all.

I closed my Facebook account and decided to focus on working on myself.

I have been sober for 2 years and 43 days now and I am happy that my family never gave up on me. I came to terms with my mother’s death but of course the guilt never goes away. My family has been my strength through everything. I joined a Narcotics Anonymous group where we share and hold ourselves accountable on this journey of healing. I also have a sober coach who has helped me with my life after addiction. I am one year into my Psychology studies and I want to help people for the rest of my life.

I want to help many more heal especially families that have been affected by addiction. You see, once there’s an addict in the family, it breaks the bonds which take a lot of effort to repair.

I want to help them do that.

Story as told to Evelyn Masaba

* Names and some places changed to protect the privacy of the family.

Related: https://etemperance.wordpress.com/2019/04/05/kachwiri-a-personal-journey-through-heroin-addiction