by Tatenda Murandu

With regret in her voice, 20 year old Mary Sibanda*, narrates how she got involved in drugs. She is close to tears and looks tired, the very act of talking to me seems like a chore.

“It all started when I attended a friend’s party and everyone was having a go at the shisha. I was asked to take a pull and not wanting to be left out I did. That one pull started this whole journey which has now spiraled out of my control,” she says.

A Shisha or water pipe, other times hookar or hubble bubble has become very popular with young people and adults alike in Zimbabwe. It is a way of smoking tobacco through a bowl with a horse or tube joined on. The tube has a mouth piece that the smoker uses to breath in the smoke. Often times, shisha contains tobacco which is sometimes mixed with fruit or molasses sugar. One can put anything in the shisha depending on what they want to get high on. From marijuana to cocaine even crystal meth. Mary had no ideas what she was smoking and only found out later that it was marijuana.

Addiction Counsellor and Researcher Phillip Ndaba said that drug use is becoming more prevalent by the day. “More young people are resorting to drugs as a coping mechanism to deal with life’s challenges. Youths in high density suburbs are experimenting and making their own concoctions from very harmful substances which no one knows the effects. It’s unfortunate that the country does not have sufficient drug rehabilitation centers for those who would want to turn over a new leaf,” he said.

Zimbabwe has an estimated 90 percent unemployment, with young people most affected. The World Bank last year said the outbreak of Covid-19 had pushed 1.3 million Zimbabweans into extreme poverty, which left the number of extremely poor citizens at 7.9 million or 49 percent of the population. It said 500,000 Zimbabwean households had at least one member who lost his or her job, and experts say these are some of the developments that have pushed the problem of drug abuse in the southern African country to crisis levels. High school is where most teenagers start experimenting with drugs and alcohol. The availability of drugs in high school is surprisingly high.  Reports indicate that 30% of high school students have an encounter with drugs on school property and have been offered, sold or given drugs on school property. Sadly some students using drugs suffer serious consequences as a result.

This is evident when you look at Mary, she confirms that she has lost a considerable amount of weight ever since she started doing drugs. She explains that she can spend a day or two without eating anything. But she is hooked and has lost all willpower to stop. “I moved from that one shisha pull to a marijuana joint, I could not stop asking for more. Now, a day hardly passes by without taking a joint or more. I started hanging around more with other kids who did drugs and was later introduced to gucca (crystal meth) and it felt better than marijuana”, she said. Crystal meth, known scientifically as methamphetamine is a highly addictive stimulant used for its powerful euphoric effects. Erratic behaviour caused by the drugs led to Mary being expelled from school. Since being expelled and having no other source of income to fund her habit, she now sells drugs from home. She even bakes weed cakes to youths around her area and her cakes are very popular at house parties.

Mary has no plans to go back to school or to pursue her now tarnished dreams. She takes her life a day at a time, happy as long as she makes enough to finance her habit for another day.

*not her real name