Darkness is slowly creeping/descending in the Mikocheni 1 primary school’s playing ground, students from the school have gone home and the crowd that had gathered to watch a football match between the local clubs has thinned out leaving a few young men still seated in the darkening football pitch.
In that darkness, a young man produces a rolled out newspaper wrapped joint of marijuana and starts smoking while others lit up cigarettes. Hamisi Abdallah 23, the young man gets out another home made cigarette which he applies saliva to before lighting it. It contains a mixture of heroine and marijuana in it and they all take few puffs and inhale deeply as the joint is rotated and smoked. Before it has made a full rotation another is lit and the process goes on.
John Leguso 28, refrains from smoking the joint. Although he is part of the group of young men seated at the place and a heroine addict. He prefers injecting it to smoking.
Although Leguso started using drugs by smoking Marijuana and then Cannabis Resin (Hashish), heroine is now his drug of choice.
“When you smoke heroin you get high, but the feeling is not as strong as when the drug is injected directly into the bloodstream,” he says.
Abdallah on the other hand is scared of injecting himself. When Leguso is far from the hearing range he tells me that injecting yourself is an easy ay of contracting Aids.
“Often they use the same needle, it’s not safe.” He says.
The same night, a little after 10pm on kinondoni road, a young woman who gives her name as only Mwanaidi is busy injecting a whitish substance using a syringe into the blood vein of her friend just above the elbow.
The two women who tell me that they practice prostitution to earn a living say that they need the drug before they embark on their business.
“We would have taken the drug earlier but we had no money to buy it.” Mwanaidi says.
Mwanaidi ties a string around her elbow as her friend rests leaning on a tree feeling the euphoria as the drug takes effect.
Her skin looks cramped and wrinkled making her a lot older than her twenty-two years.
She injects the needle on the vein explaining that the drug has to be injected into a major vein to for it to give maximum euphoria. “If you accidentally inject into the muscles, you experience a lot of pain,” Mwanaidi explains.
The peddler loaned them the drug on conditions that after they get their first customer they will pay him his money. Mwanaidi claims that prostitution is not an easy job and the drugs makes them brave enough to face their customers.
“After you inject yourself, you become fearless and shameless, she says. “You can do or say anything to anyone.”
Twenty meters from where they stand is pub where several young men are playing pool. One of the young men is the peddler but he only deals with customers that he has dealt with before.
Anyone who wants to be a new customer must be introduced by an old customer and never buys the drugs unless he comes with the old customer. When he comes from the drugs he waits while the young man receives the money and the old customer leaves with one of the boys and comes back with the drug. The peddler trusts him then he is allowed to do the purchases on his own.
The group of young men playing pool with him, act as his bodyguards and his look out. Incase their any suspicious people around the area; one of them disappears with the drugs. Incase any is arrested; their big boss provides bail as more than often the drugs are not found.
Mwanaidi says that the peddlers work in conjunction with the police although there was no proof making this allegation true .
Before the 1980’s, the most common drugs used in Tanzania were Bhang (Cannabis Sativa) and Khat (Catha Edulis) commonly known as Mirungi. The drugs were cultivated within the country.
But recently cases of harder drugs being abused have been on the increase and the number of Tanzanians being arrested abroad in possession of hard drugs or trying to transport them has been on the rise.
According to statistics released in April 2005 by the senior superintendent of police Afwilile Adamson Mponi the deputy in charge of the narcotics unit in the criminal investigation department, the number of Tanzanians arrested abroad for drug offences from 1st January to 30th June 2004 were 10. The previous year 2003 had 36 Tanzanians arrested over drug offences abroad while the year 2002 had 13 people arrested.
Figures from the report point out that although there were fewer arrests and fewer cases last year as compared to 2002 in connection with Cannabis Sativa, the weight of the drug seized by the police in their operations increased from 733,222 kilogram’s in 2003 to 964,070 kilograms in 2004.
Abdallah says that he gets his heroin stash from a local distributor from Kinondoni area known as Chacha. However that is not the only distributor as there are several others scattered through out the city in places such as Ilara near Buguruni and Msasani. Leguso says he gets his stash from the beach next to the fish market.
Small-scale distributors purchase the drug when its packed in packets of 10 measured using the tip of a fingernail. The pack of ten pieces is known as a booster and retails for 10,000 shillings. The distributors purchase each booster for 8500 shillings and make a profit of 1500 from every sale of a booster. Most of the users of this drug cannot afford to buy the drug in booster packs and therefore buy it in one packet for as little as a thousand shillings.
Previously Tanzania was a transit point for drugs such as Hashish, Mandrax (methaqualone), cocaine and heroine but amounts of drugs seized in the country seem to indicate something else. In 2001, police seized 7.967 kgs of Heroine while 2002 they seized 1.45kgs. The same year, 1863.6kgms of hashish were found concealed in hollowed out logs from Zambia in a consignment that was allegedly in transit to Canada. Last year 14.354 kgms of heroine were seized, the figure rising from the 4.071 kgms seized in 2003. This shows that there is an upward trend in heroine abuse.
The drugs get into Tanzania passing via ports, the borders or through the airport.
Drugs are mixed with other illegitimate commodities or swallowed by many traffickers who bring them into the country via air.
Dr Abdul Issa from Herbert Kairuki University was involved in a research study about drug abuse in Tanzania. The studies, which were conducted in Kinondoni district, state that the majority of those who get involved in drug abuse are aged 15 to 35 years.
According to the research, drug addicts can be grouped into two categories. The first is composed of the rich who don’t need to involve themselves in petty crimes to buy drugs. This group is small with most of the addicts from this group being young. They usually start abusing drugs due to peer pressure or as a way of seeking attention from their family.
The second and bigger category comprises of those who are not very well off and they usually turn to drug abuse out of frustration.
The research and the police report both conclude that the major drugs that are abused in Tanzania are cannabis resin (hashish), heroine and marijuana. Cases of cocaine abuse are not that high.
Dr Issa says many of the youths who are jobless and spend hours at vijiweni end up taking drugs.
“Boredom, illiteracy and peer group influence leads most of these young men into using the drugs,” he says. “ Most of them start experimenting with marijuana, they later on move to harder drugs when the rush from marijuana does not satisfy them.”
Heroin is processed from morphine, which is extracted from seeds of certain types of poppy plants. Pure heroin is a white powder, but it is frequently combined with additives so that its color may range from white to dark brown.
Heroin can be injected, sniffed/snorted, or smoked. It produces a sense of euphoria; the speed of onset depends on the method by which the drug is taken, with intravenous injection producing the most rapid onset or "rush."
Dr. Issa says the general effects of heroin include: intense, short-lived euphoria, lowered heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate; nausea, drowsiness, poor concentration lowered body temperature, decreased appetite and decreased sexual drive. Long-term effects include: mood swings, severe constipation, menstrual irregularities, lung damage, skin infections, seizures, and coma.
Studies have shown that heroin is highly addictive in any form, and overdose is often lethal.
Users of the drug in the estates normally known as teja exhibit the following signs, constricted pupils, droopy eyelids, watery eyes, clammy or itchy skin, sniffles and at times scars from injections.
Drug abuse is not only on the rise in Tanzania but the world over. The total world production of heroin is on the increase, shooting up to 4706 tonnes in 2003 from 4451 tonnes in 2002.
Although the police are on the lookout for preventative measures to curb the increase in drug abuse, a lack of rehabilitation centres in the country poses a major threat to those already addicted. As a result most convicted drug offenders who need rehabilitation end up back on the streets without rehabilitation after having served their time.
It is not long before they return to their old ways and use the same drugs they were hooked on before they were arrested.
Poverty and lack of recreation facilities in urban areas for the youth also make the fight against drugs harder.
The police report adds that they also lack equipment and adequate manpower to man the streets.
The borders that are also points where drugs get in through are too long and it’s easy for traffickers to slip through, as the police are not enough.
Until there are changes, Abdallah, his crew and others will still abuse drugs outside houses and next to our schools threatening to introduce the vice to others in the society.
Ends
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