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At Blue Cross Rehabilitation Centre in Kibos, Kisumu, teenagers talk in low tones about how they got hooked to drugs.
They are between 13 and 17 years and have battled addiction. The project manager Brian Magwero says the programme spread across the county has 500 teenagers who are struggling to construct their lives after battling addiction and substance abuse.
Jane (not her real name because she is a minor) from Nyawita slum was only 13 when she started drinking. A seventh child in a family of 12, she says she watched on several occasions as his polygamous father beat his mother.
“My father would come home drunk and beat my mother. We were always crying at home,” she says.
When her mother died in 2016, she struggled with the feeling of emptiness. Her friend gave her a sachet of alcohol that he had sneaked to school. Soon she got hooked to alcohol as it dulled the emotional pain she was experiencing.
As time went by, she started visiting the pub her father frequented and lied that he had sent her to get alcohol. She was discovered soon after and got a beating. Jane hatched another plan to keep her body intoxicated.
She met friends from the slum who told her they had a white crystalline powder that would make her feel better. Jane later came to learn that the powder was cocaine.
She would go with her friends to the shores of Lake Victoria to meet fishermen who gave them the powder in exchange for labour that involved cleaning boats and nets.
For Luke* 14, he started drug abuse when his parents separated. Nobody seemed to care for them, and he would sit with his brother alone in the house waiting for their mother to come home. They decided to become street urchins and were introduced to marijuana.
Most of the teenagers at the centre have experienced trauma, abuse and neglect that led them to drugs.
A baseline survey for Railways and Kolwa wards in Kisumu conducted by Blue Cross Kenya (BCK) shows majority of youth start abusing alcohol at the age of 12.
The report sampled 300 respondents and the findings show that 45.3 per cent of teenagers have consumed alcohol.
Magwero said most teenagers under the programme have used alcohol or marijuana and a small percentage is hooked to cocaine and other substances.
The rehab draws them from the streets and community and they are reunited with their families after the three-month programme.
He says most teachers are not trained to handle drug abuse among teenagers and they prefer to expel victims.
“It’s riskier for a child to be expelled because they get more time to access the drugs, therefore, they should be kept in school with an alternative disciplinary measure,” Magwero says.
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