13 Jul 2015

I could have been one of the nine students of Matsha Senior Secondary School who died after ingesting methanol in September of 2003. Luckily I survived.

How I survived, only God knows but the fact of the matter is, Johanna is still well and alive. I was doing Form Four then and in my third and final school term at Matsha Senior Secondary School in Kang, Kgalagadi North.

I was a still a fresher from Kagiso Senior Secondary School in Ramotswa. Inevitably, I was this timid young girl who was still to make friends in this “strange” environment.

On this fateful day, Saturday evening, I naively join a mischievous group of students. Some of them are homeboys from Bokspits in Kgalagadi South.

They are getting ready for a fun filled Saturday night of entertainment famously known as mozobozobo.

As it turns out, my new friends cannot afford any alcoholic stuff. As an alternative, they cox me to try Chibuku but I resist, only for one of my homeboys to offer me Vodka.

The boys take turns trying to outdo each other to offer me some alcoholic stuff I am not familiar with. I remember bragging and whispering to another girl next to me that “ndiri magnet”, meaning I am now a booze magnet.

In my weak imagination, I am tempted to take a swig of alcohol so I can deal with my shyness immediately I am at the entertainment hall.

Little do I realise that such shyness would actually have been a better option because later on I feel a burning sensation down my throat as I swallow the stuff while at the same time becoming so drowsy that everything around me seems to reel around me.

The burning sensation persists until I enquire from one of my colleagues why their “booze” is burning my throat like that.

The boys tell me the stuff is called “M undiluted” and thus, pure and strong. As I wonder what ‘M undiluted’ meant, I am met with mischievous silence.

Since I started drinking I had never been so drunk or so. Eventually mozobozobo ends at around 11 o’clock and I rush for a shower and I hit the blankets straight away.

When I wake up the next morning (Sunday), disappointingly I still feel drowsy. However, I dismiss the feeling as just a hangover. How wrong I am! Once again, I dash out for a quick shower, which only aggravates the situation.

I think to myself, a chilly Russian roll would do and sober me up. On the contrary, it turns out to be a waste of money. Drowsiness is all I get.

In the evening, I go to bed hoping to wake up clearheaded on the morning of Monday. Unfortunately, only disappointment is written all over my face. You guessed it right. I wake up drowsy again. Yet I dare classes hoping no one would notice.

May be it is just a fortuitous moment that one of the girls notices my restlessness and asks what is wrong with me. Unsure of what to tell her, I just say nothing is wrong. She does not take no for an answer and insists that I look drunk. Little do I know that she is an angel sent from heaven.

To this end, the burning sensation has now spread down my abdomen. This prompts me to run to the nearest tap. Pew! Water becomes nothing but a catalyst. I hit the shower for the umpteenth time but all in vain.

Soon I learn that the boy I was with the previous night was vomiting blood profusely and that his other friends are critically ill and suspected to have ingested methanol. I also get news that my “friends” are implicated in a break-in at the school’s science laboratory where ethanol and methanol were stolen that fateful Friday.

I fall into a deep slumber till the following morning (Tuesday), with an intense burning sensation still nagging me. Another morning, another pain! I become confused and delirious but matters come to a head when I hear that some of my colleagues are under medical watch. I conclude to cool off, the bush is my sanctuary.

A family friend who is a teacher in the same school learns of this unfortunate incident and goes out looking for me. I soon realise I am not smart enough when he warns me that my life is hanging by just a thread hence I would be better off if I conceded I am as guilty as charged. watching from heaven with angels.

Truth sets free. The school management then rushes me to a local clinic whereupon I am immediately referred to Hukuntsi Primary Hospital. I arrive in an unconscious state. A Botswana Defence Force (BDF) helicopter immediately lifts me to Gaborone Private Hospital where I am admitted in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

From GPH, the Johannah that is still left in me would soon be transferred yet again to Princess Marina Hospital’s ICU. Marina would become her next home, spending the next five months in the medical wards. Eventually, she comes around in February 2005.

I feel I am in a different world, and a fresh human being, oblivious of the tragic incident that nearly destroyed my life. Slowly one psychiatric nurse tells me how I ended up at Princess Marina Hospital.

I now feel much better and insist I should return to school. When I am finally discharged, and back in school, I get the shock of my life. I learn that nine of the methanol victims have died.

February 2004, I am a Botswana Police and Special Support Group (SSG) customer. I am more like a criminal and cannot help reliving the trauma I went through. Sleepless nights and nightmares are my daily bread. Ridiculed and stigmatised by some fellow students and teachers, school becomes the most horrible place to be. I am to blame though.

A different Johannah has suddenly emerged. She resorts to the bottle to quell stigma and growing taunts from other students. Truth is, to this end, the young girl has now developed failing eyesight, damage to liver, kidneys, urinary tract and to some extent there are fears of infertility.

In the end she drops out of school for a year and a half, forcing her parents to spend huge sums of money on her medication, including a three-month spell at Durbanville Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa where she learns that she might be permanently sterile.

While she feels sorry for financially and emotionally draining her parents, the most painful feeling is accepting she will never bear a child for the rest of her life.

However, time heals. After going in and out of one health facility after another, she regains full recovery and is back in school to finish her Form Five in 2005. She would attempt a course in Real Estate Studies at Baisago College but would soon drop out due to a relapse in her state of health.

This is not the Johanna her parents struggled to raise. Being barren bothers her so much that she sometimes thought of committing suicide especially after it cost her relationship after another.

However, as it turns out, I am not completely sterile because today, at 28, I am blessed with three lovely school going children.

I believe it was through divine intervention and faith in God. I prayed and wished the problem away every minute of my life.

In life, people do things they live to regret and often wish they could turn back the hands of time to do things differently but then, as they say, you only live once.

Although I have learnt to forgive myself and forget, I have lived to regret ever ingesting that methanol. As I look back, I realise that this should have been a lesson from a long time back because I bore witness to how alcohol destroyed the lives of some of my closest relatives long before this incident.

I wanted to share my heart rending ordeal but shameful story with you to help me deal with the post-traumatic stress that now and then visits me so that this also serves as a warning to young people not to fall easily into temptation.

Smart people learn from their mistakes but the smartest learn from the mistakes of others. However, one should not brood over their past mistakes and failures because that only serves to fill one with more grief, regret and depression. Ends