Friday, July 30, 1999 Published at 17:25 GMT 18:25 UK


World: Africa

Children high on sewage



By Ishbel Matheson in Lusaka

At the Lusaka sewage ponds, two teenage boys plunge their hands into the dark brown sludge, gathering up fistfuls and stuffing it into small plastic bottles. They tap the bottles on the ground, taking care to leave enough room for methane to form at the top. A sour smell rises in the hot sun, but the boys seem oblivious to the stench and the foul nature of their task.


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They are manufacturing "Jenkem", a disgusting, noxious mixture made from fermented sewage. It is cheap, potent and very popular among the thousands of street-children in Lusaka. When they cannot afford glue or are too scared to steal petrol, these youngsters turn to Jenkem as a way of getting high.

"It lasts about an hour", says one user, 16-year-old Luke Mpande, who prefers Jenkem to other substances.

"With glue, I just hear voices in my head. But with Jenkem, I see visions. I see my mother who is dead and I forget about the problems in my life."

Symptom of poverty

Sniffing sewage is a symptom of the desperate plight of Zambia's street-children. There are thought to be some 75,000 in the country as a whole - a number that has doubled in the past eight years.


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With the Aids epidemic affecting an estimated one in four adults in urban areas, and the government's harsh privatisation policies throwing thousands out of work, it is the children who have suffered the most.

Sikwanda Makono is an education specialist at the Ministry of Health. "Now that the economy is going down, we see more and more of our younger boys going into the streets.

"And girls too. If you drive around at night, you see very young girls looking for men, to merely get something to survive."

Abandoned


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The children can also no longer rely on the extended family, once the backbone of African life. This traditional safety net is now on the verge of collapse.

Children are sent out onto the streets to earn a living, or treated cruelly by relatives already struggling to support their own families, or simply abandoned by parents, who cannot afford to feed and clothe them.

Victor Chinyama of the United Nations Children's Fund in Lusaka says it is imperative that the Zambian government gets to grips with this problem.

"So far, one doesn't get the feeling that this has been recognised as priority, or as a problem that needs to be nipped in the bud," he says.

"This problem is on the rise and the sooner it is dealt with, the better."

Temporary respite

Substance-abuse offers a temporary respite in an otherwise harsh world.

Nobody knows exactly where the idea for making Jenkem came from, but it has been used by street-children in Lusaka for at least two years. Nason Banda of the Drug Enforcement Agency is not proud when he says that it is unique to Zambia. He shudders when he sees the boys at the sewage ponds, scavenging for faecal matter to make Jenkem.

"It's unimaginable" he says. "It hits right at the heart to see a human being coming down a level, to be able to dip his hand into a sewage pond, picking out the material and not caring about anything but the feeling of getting high."

I believe I experienced this in a public restroom once.

tappity, tap, tap

__________________
'07 Yukon 2500
'13 Subaru Outback 3.6R
'13 Orbea Carpe 9-speed

Currently Benzless
Formerly: 300TD, S600, E55, 560SEL

---= The forest breathes, listen.
-Native American elder

Thank doG I ate dinner before I read this, fully expecting to read something about "controlled substances", duuuuuuuuude.

__________________
1991 560 SEC AMG, 199k <---- 300 hp 10:1 ECE euro HV ...

1995 E 420, 170k "The Red Plum" (sold)

2015 BMW 535i xdrive awd Stage 1 DINAN, 6k, <----364 hp

1967 Mercury Cougar, 49k

2013 Jaguar XF, 20k <----340 hp Supercharged, All Wheel Drive (sold)

I'll never complain about anything in MY life again! THAT is grim.

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" We have nothing to fear but the main stream media itself . . . ."- Adapted from Franklin D Roosevelt for the 21st century

OBK #55

1998 Lincoln Continental - Sold
Max 1984 300TD 285,000 miles - Sold
The Dee8gonator 1987 560SEC 196,000 miles - Sold
Orgasmatron - 2006 CLS500 90,000 miles
2002 C320 Wagon 122,000 miles
2016 AMG GTS 12,000 miles

Old news............didn't guurka already post this...........?

It's the first time I've seen it. I remember something about a guy in India who crawled around in the sewers for a living. Either way, it's pretty gruesome.

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" We have nothing to fear but the main stream media itself . . . ."- Adapted from Franklin D Roosevelt for the 21st century

OBK #55

1998 Lincoln Continental - Sold
Max 1984 300TD 285,000 miles - Sold
The Dee8gonator 1987 560SEC 196,000 miles - Sold
Orgasmatron - 2006 CLS500 90,000 miles
2002 C320 Wagon 122,000 miles
2016 AMG GTS 12,000 miles

Yes, but not with the same degree of verve and elan.

.......that's Gurka, alright........... Thanks for the set-up, and punchline.....

How is life in trailer? Done your sis or mom lately. Have any three headed babies to show? Lets see some pics.......

__________________
99 Gurkha with OM616 IDI turbo

2015 Gurkha with OM616 DI turbo

2014 Rexton W with OM612 VGT

Tough crowd.

__________________
'07 Yukon 2500
'13 Subaru Outback 3.6R
'13 Orbea Carpe 9-speed

Currently Benzless
Formerly: 300TD, S600, E55, 560SEL

---= The forest breathes, listen.
-Native American elder

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/03/sewer_worker_su.html

Local officials plan to change their policies to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

Working in the sewers can be downright dangerous. In 1999, researchers reported on the risk of contracting Hepatitis C.

One reason for the risk could be that drains are often used to dispose of biological waste products.

Sewage work is a filthy job period across the globe and not just India. When we take our morning crap, we should be thanking all of them instead of making it a matter of joke. Imagine when your toilet clogs and your sewer system chokes and you have your turds crawling up your behind, be thankful that someone down below in labyrinths of hell is doing their smelly, filthy thankless dirty job.

Of course, all this doesn't really apply to trailer park dwellers, all they have to do is find the nearest shrub or bushes as you can see one of SKid Row Joe's folks in action

Attached Images

 

__________________
99 Gurkha with OM616 IDI turbo

2015 Gurkha with OM616 DI turbo

2014 Rexton W with OM612 VGT

See what happens when you don't have sewages...........

Attached Images

 

__________________
99 Gurkha with OM616 IDI turbo

2015 Gurkha with OM616 DI turbo

2014 Rexton W with OM612 VGT

What, you turn your sacred river into a sacred toilet.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/ganges-200711.html

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I'm sick of .sig files

Not that I give a rat's ass about what they do in India but water pollution is a sad facet all over the globe.




http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1594/is_3_12/ai_74628708

On paper at least, the days when an uncontrolled manufacturing sector could treat America's rivers like open sewers are over. In the early 1960s, reports Alice Outwater in her book Water, the Calumet River, which empties into Lake Michigan, was "receiving a daily dose of about 100,000 pounds of oil, 35,000 pounds of ammonia, 3,500 pounds of phenols, and 3,000 pounds of cyanide from the dense industrial complex around Chicago, Gary and Hammond." Small wonder that, in that era, rivers routinely caught fire.

__________________
99 Gurkha with OM616 IDI turbo

2015 Gurkha with OM616 DI turbo

2014 Rexton W with OM612 VGT