January 4th, 2009
One woman’s encounter with drugs
In Kenya, drug abuse is a major problem especially among the youth. Recent statistics released by the National Campaign Against Drug Abuse, (Nacada) indicate that 10 young people die daily in the Coast province alone due to drug abuse. The message is clear - unless immediate action is taken to handle the crisis, the nation could lose an entire generation to drugs.
No one is more aware of this fact than Judith Akinyi, a mother of four who unwittingly played into the hands of a drug queen, a woman who would trick her into carrying out her dirty work, only for Judith to end up behind bars for years, leaving her young family in agony.
Drug trafficking is arguably one of the most devastating illegal trades there is in the world, yet one of the most lucrative as well. Drug barons use ingenious ways to smuggle drugs into their country of choice, but they are not blind to the risk of being apprehended and therefore recruit a mule or a courier, someone that they pay to ferry their illegal loot.
Should the plan go awry, the main culprit, the one without a face, goes scot-free while the messenger, who is just a grain in the greater scheme, is left to rot away in prison.
This is exactly what happened to Judith. Growing up, she had a normal childhood, in fact, one that was arguably more privileged than many. Growing up in Nairobi’s South B and Buru-Buru estates, she attended good schools and had attentive parents who took an active interest in her education. After her high school education at Moi Girls’ High School in Nanyuki, she joined the Kenya Polytechnic to study institutional management.
After completing the course, she got a teaching job with Kenya Technical Teachers College in Gigiri. Her parents owned rental houses in the area and charged her with the responsibility of collecting rent.
That is how she met Queen, the drug baroness who would befriend her and later abuse this ‘friendship’ by using her to smuggle drugs into the country. When Judith played in Queen’s hands, she was already married with four children and was a lecturer at the Kenya Polytechnic.
Queen had a beauty salon in the Gigiri area, but to a discerning eye, it was obvious that the money she made could not have been enough to support her extravagant lifestyle.
She wore expensive clothes and jewellery, drove top of the range cars while her leather handbags were always stuffed with bundles of notes. Each time they met, Queen would ensure that Judith saw the impressive bundles of money she casually carried around.
“At the time, I did not suspect that this was a deliberate ploy to make me curious enough to find out where she got all this money from,” recalls Judith, who eventually fell for the trap and asked Queen to share the recipe for her success with her.
When Queen dismissed her Sh35,000 a month salary as peanuts which she made in mere seconds, Judith was convinced that this woman held the key to her wealthy future and was even more determined to find out what Queen really did for a living.
But she was hedgy, only revealing that she dealt in “real goods”. But Judith was too astounded by the figures Queen was causally throwing around, to bother about asking the hard questions. All she had to do was raise Sh200,000 which Queen would then use to send someone to Pakistan to collect the “goods”, which they would later sell for a hefty Sh1.2 million!
“Looking back, I should not have allowed myself to fall for such an old trick, but at the time, all I wanted was to secure my children a better future,” she says.
Since she did not have that kind of money, she took a loan through her sacco at work and delivered the money to Queen the very next day. That is when her nightmare begun.
After playing cat mouse games with her for more than a month, Queen finally dropped the bombshell – the “person” whom she had sent for the goods had run off with the money and since this was an uncertain business, Judith would just have to bear her loss.
“I literally saw my life crumbling around me. How was I going to repay that loan?”
As she sat there, in disbelief, an unremorseful Queen provided the way out – if she wanted to recover her money, she would have to go for the ‘goods’ herself.
She listened in a daze as Queen calmly proceeded to plot her trip to Pakistan. The idea of traveling to a foreign country to do something that was probably illegal frightened her, but if this is what it would take to get her money back, then so be it. Queen asked her to go to her office the next day so that they could finalise her travel plans.
The next day, Judith had a fake passport, plane ticket and other necessary documents that would get her to her destination.
“At this point, I knew without doubt that I was involved in something illegal and risky, but I needed to get my money back,” Judith says.
Besides the travel documents, she was also given two baby powder containers, each stashed with about $20,000, an equivalent of about Sh300,000. She was to hand the money to Queen’s niece who would meet her at the airport in Karachi.
Were she to try to take off with the money, Queen threatened, she would “get rid” of her. Judith says she felt her fate was sealed, that there was no going back if she still wanted to recover her money and live long enough to see her children grow up.
The trip was to take four days, and since she could not tell the truth about this illicit deal, Judith informed her husband and children that she was travelling up country and would be away for four days. Much to her relief, the flight to Pakistan was uneventful and as per the plan, Queen’s niece was waiting for her at a pre-arranged spot.
From there, they drove to a big house where an elderly man, whom the woman introduced as her husband, welcomed them. Judith was shown to a guest room which would be her sleeping quarters during her stay.
“I should have suspected something fishy when she asked for my passport and air ticket, but I was too exhausted to give it much though,” Judith recalls.
Her hosts frequently had visitors, especially at night. They would come and go until the early hours of the morning. On the fourth day after her arrival, Judith, who had packed her clothes, ready to leave, got a rude shock when her hosts informed her that she could not leave just yet.
“When I inquired why, they told me that security at the airport was tight, and it would be hard to get through with the goods. That is when I found out for sure that I would be smuggling drugs into the country,” she says.
Pleas to allow her to go home were met with hostility.
“My children were about to report to school and I, too, was expected to resume teaching yet no one back home knew where I was. I could have dropped dead at that instant.”
Without travel documents, she was a prisoner at the mercy of her hosts. For three torturous months, Judith never set foot outside the house and could only imagine what everyone back home was going through.
“The thought of the grief my children were experiencing nearly made me lose my mind,” she recalls.
After this, her hosts did not bother to hide their activities. There was no question that their sole business was drugs. “They would empty toothpaste tubes and stuff them with heroin. They would also stash the loot in suitcases with false bottoms while some couriers would swallow pellets wrapped in cello-tape and polythene paper.”
When her host finally announced that it was time for her to leave, Judith was too apprehensive to celebrate because she knew that were she to be caught, she would end up behind bars for years.
“They gave me a small suitcase carrying five kilogrammes of heroin concealed in a false bottom and hand luggage containing 150 grammes of the same.”
Trouble started even before Judith boarded the plane that would take her to Entebbe, Uganda, where her hosts informed her, someone would be waiting to take the loot.
However, this was not to be. One look at her fake passport and she was detained in Karachi. However, after conversing in a foreign language, they allowed her to board her flight, together with her luggage, and she breathed a sigh of relief. What she did not know was that immigration officials in Entebbe had been alerted and were waiting for her.
“When the plane landed, three plainclothes policemen apprehended me and took me to a holding area at the airport in Entebbe,” Judith says, adding that they later transferred her to a holding cell at Jomo Kenyatta International airport where she was held for two days before being arraigned at the Kibera law courts.
“My mother was the first to be notified of my arrest, who though shocked, was relieved to learn that I was alive.”
In December 28, 2001, Judith was arraigned at the Kibera law courts where she was charged with three counts - trafficking in narcotic drugs, being in possession of a forged passport and using a forged passport before being remanded at Lang’ata women’s prison to await her hearing.
Six months later, on June 28, 2002, Judith was sentenced to 11 years in prison. She was entitled to appeal but she knew her chances were slim since she had admitted to the crime in writing when she was arrested.
The living conditions at the prison, especially before prison reforms commenced in 2003, is a story for another day. What kept her sane were the letters and cards she regularly received from her children, who never stopped loving her for even one second.
“I know they were hurt, but to them, I was still their mother and nothing could change that. They were, and still remain my greatest source of inspiration.”
It is while serving her term that Judith discovered what she wanted to do with her life when, and if she walked out of prison.
“I had a choice – either to give in to self-pity and the depressing conditions in prison or make the best out of my situation,” she says. She took the latter.
“Witnessing the devastation drug addiction has on individuals was horrifying and I shuddered to think that I could have had a hand in destroying someone’s life had my loot not been intercepted,” Judith says.
Two particular cases made her vow to campaign against drug abuse if she ever walked out of prison. That of Sally, a young inmate from an affluent family who confessed to have started abusing drugs during teenage, right under the nose of her parents and school teachers. Then there was Maua, who had become mentally unstable after years of abusing drugs.
“These were two young women who could have turned out to be productive members of society, but drugs had made them useless.”
Then along came Margaret, an HIV-positive woman serving life for being in possession of 16 bags of bhang. She succumbed to the virus three years into her sentence. Judith is the only one who was brave enough to care for her until she passed away.
After witnessing Margaret’s suffering, Judith knew that she had to sensitise others about the virus and its connection to drugs, and even undertook a course on HIV/AIDS and counseling while in prison.
A year into her sentence, Judith heard that Queen had been arrested and was being held at the remand prison just a few metres away from the main prison.
“After my arrest, I had contacted Queen, who had promised to use her connections to have me freed, but I should have known that hers was just a hollow promise,” says Judith, observing that stripped of her expensive clothes and make-up, Queen was a pitiable sight.
Besides the Kenyan authorities, the United States of America was also keen on charging Queen with conspiring to import heroin into their country and were making every effort to have her extradited.
They succeeded, and Judith was one of the witnesses who were flown there to testify against Queen in 2004. After trial, she was sentenced to 24 years in prison, where she is still languishing.
Since walking out of prison seven months ago, after being granted a presidential pardon, Judith has slowly been piecing her life back together. She has mended her relationship with her children, who are proud of the work she is doing to sensitise young people about the consequences of using drugs.
“I know I am very lucky to have received a second chance to start all over again and plan to make the most of my freedom.”
Her moving account is told in Deadly Money Maker, the book she wrote while in prison, and which was published under her pen name Saga McOdongo just before she was released from prison last year.
Through the NGO she set up three months after her release from prison, Poverty Reduction, Drugs and HIV/AIDS Awareness, most of her time is spent in schools, churches and other forums preaching the vices of drug abuse and its connection to poverty and HIV/AIDS.
She feels that as long as people are aware of the harmful effects of drugs, the war against drug trafficking will be won because there will be no users.
Her message rings true – No one is immune to the lure of the dark world of drug trafficking, not even an educated person who should know the consequences. She also calls on parents to take an active interest in their children’s lives because young people are the most vulnerable group.
“Young people are very impressionable and factors such as peer pressure, ignorance and boredom are enough to get them hooked to drugs.”
Source.nation.ke