A woman smokes shisha
Growing up, I always wanted to be two things in life; a pilot and a party boy. Height or lack thereof, conspired to deny me the former. Of course I w ill not say much about the lack of clear career guidance and access to flight training opportunities. This is not meant to be a career guidance piece, please. As for being a party boy, let’s just say I have had my fair share of a good time.
Cocaine was just another C-word to my young mind. So, imagine the embarrassment when I think back to the years I idolised this man whose fortune was built on skulls of men and women allover the world who got hooked to his cocaine. Ugandan media has recently been awash with alarm bells of a festering drug epidemic sweeping through universities, homes and workplaces. In the last month or so, this paper alone has run headlines like: “Drug cartels hook university students”, “Inside the drug rings at universities and the unending allure of the trade”, “Drugs, just one boda boda away from campus gates”.
It’s drug armageddon; an avalanche sweeping away at the very foundation of our society. Suddenly, I am ashamed to tell stories of my childhood job, selling weed as a 12-year-old in Seeta. This was my second job; the first one having been fetching water for the rich and middle class. It causes me untold embarrassment because I now fully know the devastation drugs can cause.
My idolisation of Pablo Escobar now fills me with shivers of regret. I might as well have wanted to be an undertaker. But this embarrassment really is not enough. It is what I do about the drug problem that counts. It is what you, the reader does about it that counts. We live in a very permissive society. But also we live in a society that is seeing declining career achievement trajectories, low job numbers, unfathomable pressure to live up to the latest trends, runaway depression etc.
It is easy to look at these absurdities of our daily existence, embrace our perceived helplessness and find comfort in drugs and binge drinking. By surrendering to these vices, we as individuals are losing our last level of control; the control of our individual mental space. Beyond that point, there is no coming back for most people. Only the fortunate few make it back. It should not be this way. We should have tough conversations with each other and fashion a way out of this epidemic with a non-judgmental approach, love, respect, social support and of course laughter.
