The drug pushers have become bolder and have started operating openly from their houses in city estates. Not even their neighbours can muster the courage to testify against them in a court of law, writes JOHN OYWA
It is mid morning on a Friday and the Ol-Leleshwa road in Nairobi’s Outering estate is teeming with humanity.
Just across the junction, two teenagers emerge from behind a vegetable kiosk. Dressed shabbily in jeans and T-shirts, they swagger across the road then take a sudden turn towards a house, only two rows from the main street.
Our guide warns us against taking pictures as the two stood at the door, waiting to be let in. They disappear into the house and re-emerge after exactly two minutes. The door is quickly shut behind them.
From a vantage point, we watch as more young people troop to the house and emerge with little items wrapped in pieces of papers. The traffic to the ‘mascan’, as the house is popularly known, increases as the sun creeps up the Nairobi skyline.
By mid-day, after a three-hour vigil, we had counted 40 youths, eight of them girls, who visited the house, which locals say is one of the oldest and well known drug dens in Eastlands.
Motorcycle taxi operators, water vendors and hawkers arrive here one after the other to purchase bhang and various other drugs.
Located just a stone throw away from the SOS youth training and medical centre, the infamous house turned drug store has ruined the future of many youth and attempts by parents to have its owners arrested have been fruitless.
The business is run by two siblings who are said to have subdued their parents to silence. Police have full details of activities in the house and have in the past conducted raids, only to release the suspects under mysterious circumstances.
"They sell all kinds of hard drugs and they are untouchable. They have ruined the lives of many young people. We have told the police but the illicit business continues," says our guide, who has lived in the estate for more than ten years.
Estate residents discuss the illicit activities in the house in low tones because the young men behind the trade are ruthless.
"The boys behind the drugs trade in our estate are above the law. They even beat up their parents," says one resident who asks not to be identified for fear of reprisals.
Sharp rise
A weeklong investigation by The Underworld reveals that the drug business in Outering Estate is just but a case study of a worsening situation in Nairobi and other urban centres.
With drug abuse among the youth on a sharp increase across the country, drug lords are shifting their bases to strategic locations in the residential estates where they are now selling rolls of bhang for as little as Sh10 apiece.
A survey in most of the slums in Nairobi and even in middle class estates show a growing lucrative trade in drugs and illicit brews.
Recent reports by the National Campaign against Drug Abuse (Nacada) show a worrying upsurge in the number of youth abusing drugs in the country (See separate story).
In most of the estates, parents told The Underworld drugs had turned their children into zombies. Many have dropped out of school while girls have been impregnated or even infected with deadly sexually transmitted diseases after being raped in drug dens.
Open market
In Kawangware, Kibera, Mukuru, Mathare and many other slums, hard drugs are sold openly to the youth. But peddlers are under instructions from their bosses not to deal with strangers. Our attempt to buy rolls of bhang at a house in Kayole failed after the owner slammed the door in our face after realising we were not his usual customers.
A young man who was lurking around the house looked at me sympathetically and said: Pole buda, hii kitu iko na wenyewe, wewe ni kama mgeni (Sorry sir, this thing has its owners. It is like you are a visitor here).
Sources say peddlers in the estates get supplies from the well connected drug importers. But the most common and most abused drug is bhang, which gets into Nairobi by road from Tanzania where it is openly grown in plantations.
On reaching Nairobi, it’s quickly re-packaged and distributed to agents with outlets in the residential estates.
Protected dealers
A former police officer who asked not to be named told The Underworld that drug lords in Nairobi enjoyed protection from the police, making it difficult to fight the crime.
"It is not a secret that some police officers are part of the drug ring. They provide intelligence to peddlers, tipping them off whenever a raid is planned and giving them safe passage for the drugs. These officers have become rich overnight," says the retired chief inspector of police.
But Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe says it is wrong to blame the force for crimes committed by few wayward officers.
He, however, acknowledges that fighting drug trade in Nairobi and other urban areas is becoming one of the biggest challenges facing the force.
"The high number of young people getting addicted to drugs has helped to fuel the illicit trade because of the demand," says Kiraithe.
"The law also appears to be lenient on drug trafficking suspects. The law should be such that drug related crimes are not bailable," he notes.
The police spokesman says some drug traffickers and peddlers had been released by police due to lack of evidence.
"The Narcotic Act has put very high threshold in the prosecution of drug related cases and the police cannot take such cases to court without proper evidence," says Kiraithe.
He adds: "The other challenge we are facing is that even the neighbours of these drug peddlers are not willing to be witnesses whenever we arrest these people. It’s a big problem."
To evade the police, Kiraithe notes, the drug peddlers work in groups of about ten, with some members tasked with the duty of watching out for any sign of impending police raid.
