Day 6 - Drugs

Friday 26th July - Drugs

No, I didn't take any drugs today. Unless you count my malaria medication. In fact, I mostly spent time with Friends of the Street Children thinking about their financial position and discussing it with staff; this still wasn't enough to drive me to snort charlie. Instead I thought I would talk about the drugs used by the street children.

Again, I have not had permission from the street kids I met to even take pictures of them using drugs, let alone put them on my blog. The images used here are from a google search.

The main drugs used by the street kids are:

• Glue sniffing
• Jet fuel (seems to be the most common from what I saw; mostly sniffed from a bottle or rag)
• Marijuana (less common)

Apart from this, the kids also ferment their own drugs. In the old days they used to use human faeces a lot for this purpose. This was called Jenkem.

 

This doesn't seem to happen much any more - street kids often ferment other things, like chloroquine.

Lots of the drugs that we would expect to see back home – alcohol, cocaine, heroin – are not seen here. I would speculate that this is because of cost and availability.

The reasons given for drug use are therefore different. There is less reference to the high or pleasure that can be had from drug use. These drugs do have a hallucinogenic effect though. Perhaps more importantly, it helps the kids feel the cold less, which is useful at night time in the cold season.