Portrait of a druggie
Lawrence Seretse | Friday February 7, 2014 16:10
He keeps looking over the frame of his dark glasses and turning to look over his shoulder, as if looking out for someone. His image is that of a dog-tired young man in need of a fresh hair cut. His ‘When Metallica Ruled The World’ pullover is threadbare, the motif barely noticeable.
But one can still make out the figure of a decapitated but heavily-chained Rottweiler, its flesh visible through cigarette burn-holes.
Jimmy tosses a small sachet with a small white rock on my lap. 'Here is the crack you asked for,' he begins. 'As you can see, it was easy to source it because you can get this stuff any place. But I hope this was not on video because I could get killed if it gets known that I aided a reporter.'
The miniature sting operation was to determine how, contrary to police claims of arrests of drug peddlers, cocaine is easily accessible on the streets of Gaborone and in the city’s hotels and shopping malls.
Jimmy says any narcotic, including cocaine, ecstasy and crack rocks, is available even at nightclubs, for as little as P200 for a rock the size of a peanut. And there it was on the table; all it took was a phone call and a couple of minutes.
Jimmy seemed anxious to have a story published about narcotics in Gabs. Yet his face is a mixture of uncertainty, repentance and anxiety. In hushed tones, he tells of his ‘white powder’ side of life.
Jimmy started dabbling in drugs when he was in Limpopo province of South Africa. Moneyed musicians (names withheld) he used to hang out with lured him into the habit.
'We would hit a few lines of cocaine backstage. It was peer pressure, I guess. Back in the hotel later, we would take ecstasy pills and a lot of alcohol, then switch to coke or crack. We called that remedy 'a turbo charge'.'
Jimmy says with the turbo charge the high lasts for only 30 minutes . The fun part is that the crack-high is a constant super acceleration – a mixture of hyper activity and hallucinations that lasts for 30 minutes.
'After that, your deceleration to sober up is as quick as the way up as opposed to ecstasy which keeps you going for eight hours,” he says.
That is why most drug dealers prefer crack because the consumer has to keep on coming back all day. In South Africa obtaining crack or cocaine is as easy as buying dagga from your local shebeen queen.
'My muso friends had the right connections, which I never saw myself, but they were never short of crack
'A friend of mine once blew P150,000 a week on crack. That is just how hooked my friends were. It was fun at the time, and we could actually get so high that we could see sound!”
Back home in Botswana Jimmy, who was not fully addicted yet found out that these narcotics were not readily available.
'Unlike in Mzansi, this side things are more strict, if not behind the times. There are two things that helped me scrap the habit. These narcotics were not readily available here at the time and my mother is a nurse, so she understood my condition and the best way to help me deal with it,'he says.
His mother knew that scolding or punishing him was not the way to go; rather it would make him yearn for the stuff. “So she became extra-supportive. That was how I was able to shed the drug habit.
But nowadays things have changed in Gabs. 'This thing is now all over. The drug dealer may just be sitting next to you and you will not know it. A drug deal has probably happened a hundred times under your nose and you never realised it,' Jimmy says.
Jimmy could not be coerced into telling how to get it. 'I cannot tell you because I do not trust you enough. They do not trust me as well since I do not take drugs any more. So there is that 'disentanglement,' which is why I can sit and chat with you,' he says.
Jimmy is quick to point out that he spent a lot of money to sustain the habit. 'I once sold my bed so I could get high. That’s how messed up I was. But as I said, a friend of mine spent P150,000 in one week between Jo'burg and Gabs just on drugs. I am lucky to have quit before I started working because I do not know how I would have coped.
'Crack is for those with buying power – rich folks and high profile individuals who get lucrative salaries. It is either you watch debts pile up over your head as you get high or you baulk and turn to stuff you can afford like alcohol. It can be extremely dangerous at this stage. You can find yourself owing drug dealers and many big people.
Jimmy says in Botswana the drug cartel involves Indians at the top and Nigerians at the bottom. 'Indians run this thing with protection from powerful people in high places. The Indians are like the drug lords who give it to the dealer who sells it to you. They remain invisible but they are known.
'Your secret agents know all these syndicates but they are never caught. We know that high profile people are involved. We often see guys get eliminated because they got rich, high and forgot who was actually running the show.
Jimmy says the secret agents, some who are his friends, are also in on the game and fleece 60 percent from the dealer who gets 40 percent and 'that is a lot of money for everyone.
'I hang around with them. My fear is that the day the police decide to nab them I could also be seen as an accomplice. But that will not happen in a long time anyway.'
He says the drug lords pay heavy kickbacks to have their consignment pass through the borders and customs people, Botswana Unified Revenue Services and the police are involved.
'There was a time when a whole shipment was transported from South Africa in police vehicles and straight to a drug lord's house.
'My brother was once a big dealer. Those high profile people would come to his house but I did not know what was going on then. I only learnt from my mother some time back. Boss, you should see the cars he drove. I have not seen him for three years now, and I do not know if he is still dealing.
At that stage Jimmy becomes edgy. 'No one should hear me tell you all this, of course. I do not regret anything in my life. In fact, I have learnt and survived this.
The thing is some of these drugs need a person who is in touch with their spiritual reality to be able to control how they manifest in them.'