Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
IF those that had known Mthulisi Mukwa Moyo before saw him in 2008, they would have denied that the dishevelled man in front of them was the same young lad that seemed like a bright spark of light and energy on the streets of Gweru in the early 1990s.
Moyo was now living in Mozambique, far from the comfort and clean breezes of Gweru, in the midsection of Zimbabwe. Not only was he away from the comfort of home, he was now living in a squatter camp on the foot of Maputo, Mozambique’s capital.
It was a spectacular fall for a man who had been raised in a home where scripture was supreme, where praise and worship were treated as daily bread. He was, for all intents and purposes, now down and out, but his fall had been a long time coming. It had started all the way back when he was a Form 4 student at Mambo High School in Gweru.
“I am a pastor’s kid. I grew up in the church in a very safe and secure environment and yet in spite of being surrounded by a positive and strong family, I got exposed to alcohol and cannabis. I got exposed at an early age, 14. So, with that being said, you can assume that no one is safe. I was in Form 2 at Mambo High School then,” he told Sunday Life.
Moyo had come from a good home, with the kind of loving support that was supposed to help him bloom to his full potential. Yet, in high school, he was now gleefully rubbing shoulders with the kind of people and influences that his father preached against every Sunday on the pulpit.
“I got involved with the wrong friends because this thing usually starts with peer pressure and 14 is the average age when adolescents start to experiment with drugs. So, I fell right into the statistics. I lost focus on school completely. We would jump the perimeter wall at school to go and smoke weed or drink alcohol in the fields or basketball courts. Around Mambo there’s Mutapa, there’s Ascot and Mutapa was the hot seat of substance abuse at the time so we would spend most of our time there because that’s where we would pass on our way home,” he said.
It would not be long before what began as a “hobby” for Moyo became a full-blown addiction. Cannabis was his drug of choice as, for a high school student, it was easier to acquire and consume.
“Within a short space of time, I would become a serious abuser of cannabis. It was easier to get cannabis because you didn’t get alcohol being sold by old ladies in the neighbourhood. Weed is not like a big bottle of beer which raises alarm when a young boy in school uniform starts drinking it. You can buy weed, put it in your pocket and smoke it later after you jump the fence at school,” he said.
As the drugs and alcohol began to consume him, Moyo’s grades at school began to suffer. He barely ever saw the inside of a classroom, as he spent most of his time seeking dark alleys or empty fields where he could consume his favourite illicit substances.
“I messed up at school big time. I stopped attending classes almost altogether and at that time, it was in the 90s, gangs were still a problem so I ended up getting mixed up with them. I changed schools because the situation was now bad and I ended up at a mission school in Shurugwi. In the first week or so I had already made bad friends. We would skip class and would go to a bottle store, which was about 12km away in the rural areas. We would come back when it was almost dawn, drunk and we would bath and go to class but you can’t concentrate. At 10am, you are already drinking or smoking. So, that is how I failed my Form 4 and I had to supplement. It was hard because I knew I had the potential to pass but my time had been taken away by useless things and here I was, while others were moving forward I was supplementing, that was hard,” he said.
After being stung by the pain of failure, it seemed as if Moyo was on course to turn his life around. He had cleaned up his act and his A-levels progressed without the strife that had accompanied his life a few years prior. That tranquillity was not to last however, as Moyo found himself falling for the lure of dangerous substances when he went for higher education at Solusi University.
“So, when I went to A-level, I was still recovering from the pain of failing. I went to Anderson High School, no drinking, no smoking, hardly any friends. I had cleaned up my act and I even became a prefect. I went to university and unfortunately, I made bad friends again. I started bunking classes, drinking, smoking, missing quizzes and examinations. Ultimately, I dropped out of university after six years. I changed programmes and faculties a few times and six years later, I had not graduated. People I started with had gone on to do their masters and some had even come back to the same institution and were lecturing me, it became embarrassing so I dropped out. I thought I could escape the failures of my life,” he said.
With a cloud of failure now seemingly following him, Moyo decided to leave Zimbabwe’s borders and aim for a fresh start. That attempt at a new beginning led him to more failure, more drugs and ultimately, a squatter camp at the edge of Maputo.
“I left the country, went to Swaziland and got an opportunity to study but I messed it up again. I had started hanging around bad friends again. I eventually left Swaziland and found myself in Mozambique. This was around 2007. In 2008, I was living in a squatter camp outside of Maputo. That was when I had my Damascus moment. I thought to myself, ‘you can’t be living like this, this is bad. You can do better than this.’ That’s when I made my way back home, which included walking all the way from Mutare to Harare,” he said.
From the moment that he chose to make the great trek from Maputo back home, Moyo has lived a clean life. He is the prodigal son that returned, determined to lead other lost souls towards a path of righteousness. Moyo is now one of Zimbabwe’s most prominent anti-drug advocates, taking his gospel around the country.
Since he quit, Zimbabwe has been plunged into an unprecedented drug epidemic that even threatens to derail the country’s best-laid plans. It is for this reason that Moyo penned a book, Drug and Alcohol Intervention, which seeks to act as a guide for those that wish to confront the rampant drug problem. Moyo’s insights and tragic experiences act as a thread helping to tie together a piece of literature that shows that it is possible to walk away from the abyss, no matter how deep one’s addiction to illicit substances is.
“I ended up starting a programme, it’s not funded, it’s just me being systematic and organised about the work that I am doing. I go around communities, particularly co-operating with the church, teaching about drug and alcohol abuse. We reach out to young people that have not yet started so that they can escape and also those that have started so they can recover, and transform their lives. Ultimately, I decided to write a book because I have been travelling, taking notes, I have lessons that can help any person that wants to intervene and effectively help those that are struggling,” he said.