Using hard drugs exposed me to HIV, man admits

By Patrick Beja

It all began with a simple puff. After a while the cigarette could not give him the kick and bhang came in.

He gradually drifted into hard drugs and wasted away for eleven years. He combined bhang and heroin for what is popularly known as ‘cocktail’ while in Form Two.

Reformed drug addict Khalid Abdalla says he kept the habit secret to his family for seven years despite drastic weight loss.

Changamwe MP and Assistant Minister for Environment Ramadhan Kajembe joins a walk to raise awareness on HIV and Aids in his constituency, last week. [PHOTO: MAARUFU MOHAMED/STANDARD]

Abdalla, 33, currently works at Reachout Centre Trust where helps rehabilitating other drug addicts.

His two cousins were not lucky as they succumbed to drugs. Many of his peers shared syringes to inject themselves with the drugs and some contracted HIV.

"Drug use claimed many of my friends and some relatives," he tells The Standard at Kisimani-Ngomeni sea front in Mombasa.

Local youths frequent the spot and disguise their drug-abuse habits with activities at the sea front.

He reveals he also visited here to smoke his drug cocktails and relax for hours.

He says he was held in most police stations in the town and remanded at Shimo La Tewa Prison, where peers could sneak in heroin stuffed in loaves of bread.

Due to pressure to raise money to buy drugs, he had to pick pockets. At one time he was stabbed with a knife and left for dead as he tried to steal from a man.

"At one time police officers found me with heroin, but I escaped," he says.

His relative took him to witchdoctors in Tanga, Tanzania, after linking his condition to witchcraft.

Today, Abdalla is a strong and straight-talking man who is now the pride of his family.

His turning point came when his sister died and as she was being buried, he was high on drugs.

The act shocked him since he loved her so much. "I could not believe I had become that heartless and decided to seek help," he says.

Quitting drugs, he says, was a nightmare. For three days his whole body was in pain. He vomited and suffered several bouts of diarrhoea.

"The withdrawal was a painful process. It takes a strong will to quit drugs and not just going to a rehabilitation centre," he says.

As he sought help, he also met his wife of four years, Warda Awadh.

Personal counsellor

"I decided to marry Warda because I needed someone who could help me remain free from drugs. My wife is my personal counsellor. She knows much about addiction," he says.

They now have two sons, Bashir and Murad, and despite their little income, they are a happy family.

Warda says she ventured in counselling and motivating drug addicts after her brother became a drug addict.

"I decided to marry Khalid because of my desire to help drug addicts. Addicts represent the condition of my brother," she says.

After quitting drugs, Abdalla moved from Mwandoni to Mackinnon Road village.

"Moving out has helped me reform. It cut me off from the peers who lured me into drugs. But the challenge is when I reach out to former colleagues, some of them do not believe I have quit," he says.

His cousin Seif Abdalla Omar is still struggling to quit the habit, which cost him his job at Mombasa Municipal Council.

A father of three, Seif says he worked for 13 years. "Drugs messed up my life. I lost my job in the cleaning department," he says.

The National Aids Control Council (NACC) says the use of syringes among drug users has caused a crisis in Mombasa. A field officer, Mr Mwanjama Omari, has says HIV and Aids prevalence rate has gone up in Mombasa due to sharing of syringes among drug users.

Injection Drug Users (IDUs) spend billions of shillings annually, according to research. Dr Timothy Mugusia says 500 IDUs alone could spend more than Sh2 billion a year on drugs.

NACC sponsored the study in February, this year.

The report says an IDU could inject himself four times a day at a cost of Sh1,600. Dr Mugusia, the CEO Darat HIV and Aids International Agency, says among the 160 respondents in the study, 133 were IDUs injecting themselves with heroin. Stories from the drug users are sad and frightening, the report says.

Flash blood

Flash blood, an emerging trend involving needle sharing among the IDU addicts have been reported in Dar es Salaam. Mugusia says the trend involves an IDU addict, who is high on drugs drawing his blood and passing the syringe to a companion to inject the blood into his vein.

The companion usually does this because they cannot afford to buy the drugs.

Due to the proximity of Dar es Salaam and Mombasa, there is fear that the trend might have spread to the Kenyan Coast.

 

 

Read all about: HIV Khalid Abdalla Reachout Centre Trust National Aids Control Council NACC Mombasa

 

 

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