The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu & Melinda Ncube, Sunday Life Reporters
IT was in a room full of friends, under pressure from their judgement filled eyes, when Prince Moyo (not real name) started taking drugs.
In that room, back at the start of the stay-at-home in Zimbabwe in March last year, when Covid-19 was beginning to tighten its grip on a nation that, only a month prior, had until then only known how to breathe and smile unrestrained by a mask, Prince (14) was under the spotlight.
A cabinet of some of his closest friends in Bulawayo’s Cowdray Park suburb had convened and they had decided that should he choose not to have sexual intercourse with a girl that was older than him, he would forever be branded a coward.
It was a blow that Prince’s 14-year-old ego could not handle. The solution was simple. From the beginning of the lockdown, as schools shut their gates and as a nation, up to that point in its storied history, had known the familiar warmth of embracing sanitiser-free hands, began grappling with the prospect that death was now perhaps a handshake away, Prince and his friends had been boiling sanitary pads and diapers in order to get high. It would be this unlikely mix of intoxicants that would get through this latest ordeal, Prince thought.
“I started indulging in this habit during the lockdown in 2020 under the influence of my brother and his friends. We had our base where we would just boil the diapers or sanitary pads which I would have stolen from my sisters’ room.
Most of the time we would then hook up with girls of my age and some seemed older than me.
“I remember my first day when I was being forced to have sexual intercourse with one of the girls who were around that day, I couldn’t stand the fact that I was being called all sorts of names. They were saying ‘you are a coward’. I had to prove a point to them but unfortunately it becomes a habit as well so whenever I’m intoxicated, I have to sleep with a girl,” he said.
Olicah Kaira
According to Prince, while the youngsters would have preferred some other drugs, at a time when belts were tightening as Covid-19 hit the world, diapers and sanitary pads were the only viable options for a group of youngsters searching for the ultimate high. For R10 or $50, they could get a cheap thrill.
“Boiled liquid from diapers and sanitary pads tastes bitter. If we had money, we would buy broncleer a cold (treatment) syrup, which costs 100 rand. Day after day as I was taking it, I was getting addicted to it, the feeling and the hallucinations that I experienced made me feel like I was in a different world,” he said.
An unwanted pregnancy with a girl his age forced Thabo (19), to turn to a cocktail of boiled diapers and mosquito repellent, a concoction he believes helped him with the mental anguish of being disowned by his own parents. Like Prince, his problems with addiction also started at the onset of the lockdown.
“I have been drinking boiled diapers for more than a year now as a way to subdue the pain from challenges that I have been facing. My problems began when I impregnated a girl that is the same age as I am. And I thought my parents were going to be supportive and understanding even though I had disappointed them, but things did not turn out the way that I expected. I was dragged to Nomalungelo’s parents along with all my belongings so that I would stay there with them. This was painful because I have my own parents. I believe this crippled me mentally, although they did take care of me, it just wasn’t a pleasant experience,” he said.
What started as a stress reliever and an adventure for Thabo, quickly became a marauding addiction.
“I hope you can understand the predicament I was in and it is because of it that I found solace in drinking liquid from diapers and sometimes I would mix it with a mosquito repellant and inject it into my system for faster effect.
“Throughout that time, I had insomnia and therefore by doing so, I could at least sleep for even two days straight with my mind at ease. I started off smoking weed and drinking bronclear.
“I took it as an adventure but I did not know that I would end up being addicted to drinking boiled liquid from diapers to an extent of injecting it into my veins,” he said.
It was with the reopening of schools that the idleness that seduced some young people into taking drugs would be nipped in the bud. However, Bulawayo Provincial Education Director (PED) Mrs Olicah Kaira revealed that during a Matabeleland Council for the Welfare of the Child meeting, (MCWC), that children, sometimes aided and abetted by parents, were now also bringing drugs into classrooms.
“The ministry is also battling the issue of drugs and substance abuse. Some children are bringing the drugs to school and when they are questioned they say that the drugs will be coming from parents who ask them to sell at school,” she said.
As a crystal meth pandemic ravages the ghetto streets of Harare, in Victoria Falls, primary school going children have reportedly taken to getting high by sniffling Jolly Juice powder, a craze which spread around the resort town from last year as boredom set in among the young. While Bulawayo does not have a signature drug, sanitisers, pads and diapers seem to be drugs of choice.
“We have had admissions of people taking crystal meth,” said Ingutsheni Central Hospital Clinical Director Dr Wellington Ranga. Ingutsheni is one of the few institutions that cater for some victims of drug abuse.
“That one is now a problem. I also got information that UBH admitted three patients that had come down because of the intake of hand sanitisers. Our sanitisers are alcohol based and they are supposed to have high alcohol content.
It is for that reason that a lot of drug users have started abusing them. It is an issue that needs to be looked at closely.
As for the use of diapers and other things like stuff from flat screen television sets, we have heard extensively about them but we have not had an increase in admissions because of them. This may be because it is mostly happening outside our institutions and we only get to know of it formally when they become psychotic,” he said.
According to the Zimbabwe Civil Liberties and Drugs Network (ZCLDN) survey, drug abuse has become a serious problem among youths who in 2019 made up 45 percent of the patients admitted into the country’s mental health institutions. ZCLDN said the number of youths reported to engage in drug abuse in 2017 was pegged at 43 percent and the figure rose to 45 percent in 2018 and 57 percent in 2019.
According to Dr Ranga, most drug users would always gravitate to whatever the latest and most potent high was on the market, no matter how repulsive or dangerous it seemed to non-users.
“What we have noticed is that when they get admitted here, it is usually not for one thing. You will find that they are hooked to mbanje, alcohol, bronclear, crystal meth and a variety of other drugs.
“It’s not hard to figure out why some might be taking diapers because once they start using them, they always try to keep up with whatever drug is new on the market,” he said.
