CHRISTIAN COMMENT: Students shocked by drug misery

However, there is that darker, more destructive kind that plagues society – alcoholism and drug abuse.

Regardless of what it may be, the stuff we get hooked on can shape our lives.

When 12 Littlehampton Academy students travelled to Uganda recently, they came face to face with the shocking truth about how children – some as young as six – become addicted and why they struggle to get free.

Working with local charity CRED Foundation and Ugandan-based Retrak, we went to work with street children aged six and up.

Children who should be starting infant school, were surviving in the gutters and back alleys in the slums of the capital, Kampala.

We went out with armed guards to visit their so-called home. The welcome from the youngsters was warm but edgy, with suspicion and intrigue mixed with the tangible sense of injustice.

They kept appearing in small groups, and would walk up and high-five us. Their street-scarred hands energetic to say ‘hello there!’; their faces, happy yet in pain.

And then we saw their eyes. Tired eyes that were blood-shot, not just from lack of sleep but from something else...

We could smell it first, a scent of fuel or glue, and then as they started to trust us, they started to sniff. Small plastic gin bottles, with petrol soaked rags inside. An addiction so cheap, an escape so quick, a high so short.

We all looked and we all held back the tears.

Later, as we talked as a team, we reflected on what we would do to escape such hell as the streets. We agreed that anything to escape might be tried.

For the rest of the week we worked with these amazing children. Playing games, teaching lessons, having fun. For six hours every day we escaped the pain and poverty together through laughter and learning.

Then as dusk would approach, they would grab their big collection sacks, leave the safety of the centre behind and start out for the plastic picking. The more empty bottles collected, the more coins they were rewarded with. The greater the reward, then the bigger the meal, with perhaps a little left over to get some more glue to help escape the night that lay ahead. We are all addicted, I guess. It’s just that some of us have different things to escape from.

The centre works hard to help the kids get off the streets, back into a home and going to a school. We met success stories, children off the streets, and their smiles will remain with me for ever.

But alongside them are the many, many more who tonight will sleep with a pavement for a pillow and a plastic bottle close by, so that if fear creeps past, they can escape for a while.

By Paul Sanderson