LENGIBATSANDZAKO: DEPRESSION ILLNESS MORE VEILED THAN SEX AND ABUSE-OF-STATE-POWER PUT TOGETHER

Friday, February 15, 2013

DEPRESSION ILLNESS MORE VEILED THAN SEX AND ABUSE-OF-STATE-POWER PUT TOGETHER

Kulwa Moi, the Kenyan butterfly spreading its wings to fly even as a young school-going girl, BUT DEPRESSION WOULD HAVE NONE OF IT! To this day, depression is still bringing her down and interring her alive. But her never-say-die attitude and her daring to speak about her condition (too often between sobs ) mean her rescue is nigh as medical expertise can and does beat depression particularly with patients like Miss Moi. But first, let's get a musical ring to depression. Bonnie Raitt's rendition of ["Hear Me Lord I'm Feeling Low"]

There is a taboo about a health condition called ‘DEPRESSION’ (in the great Kiswahili Language, “MFADHAIKO”; SEEING THAT THIS POST IS ABOUT A YOUNG KENYAN WOMAN WHO HAS COMMUNICATED HEREIN IN THAT EASTERN-AFRICAN LANGUAGE).

Depression is a condition probably easy to describe if you’ve read extensively about it, say, when you are studying psychiatry or you are an inquisitive sufferer who stumbled upon psychodynamic literature.

However, if you have ever suffered from it from the perspective of the average sufferer, and now desire to convey the feeling to someone who does not know it, YOU CAN’T EVEN BEGIN TO DESCRIBE IT. I even want to hazard the statement that most depression sufferers in the world DO NOT EVEN KNOW THEY SUFFER FROM THE CONDITION, and that is tragic where depression is such a serious condition some countries are reportedly locked in frenzies towards getting depression some serious recognition with the sufferer accorded disability status just like somebody without a limb or two or somebody who has lost power of hearing etc.

Now let me try to describe depression myself (but even me do not you trust seeing that my most read childhood books were, surprise surprise, medical rather than political). Well, then (and according to Dr Phiri who never became a doctor) Depression will make your life miserable.

Every pain coming your way hits you tenfold more than it would hit the next guy.

Every day of your life is a torture more so because you do not know what wrong you did to deserve this.

The demon will remind you of its stranglehold by letting you, often for two solid hours or three per fortnight, to have an inexplicable high comparable only to heaven whereas you cannot explain the source or cause of that high. Then you are back again to the gloom of depression for another week or more.

People around you are unfeeling. Doctors diagnose you for diseases you do not have. People call you a malingerer; others call you a coward.

At school you may have an above-average IQ and your marks will attest to it, but you will continue to suffer privately from an inferiority complex and having a friend of the opposite sex is a completely disarming thought. Except for the company of headaches, you are mostly a loner; with luck, having one and only one trusted friend. You may have studied diligently the whole year, enough to get an A for your subject but come examination day with a particularly intense attack by your depression YOU FAIRLY YOUR SUBJECT or at most, barely pass it! Other kids who saw you studying throughout nights (“cross-nighting” where your insomnia calved by your depression made it a walk in the park) will goad you no end:

“Aha…? So you see it, Phiri? You studied HARD but you failed SOFTLY!”

‘“Aha…? So you see it, Phiri? All Work No Play Makes Jim a Dull Boy!” but for you the Africanist we will rephrase it: “All Work No Play Makes PHIRI a Dull Boy!”’

When in adulthood you get some money you want to drink so as to drown the pain in the side of your heart and your mind. Indeed scientists seem to suggest that a good number (if not the majority) of alcoholics are masking depression, having alcoholism as a secondary malady where the primary one is DEPRESSION. Too often you consider death from own hand is the solution to the problem and many depressives end up committing suicide which is a consolation in comparison with the fact that a good number will kill their loved-ones before killing themselves. (South Africa alone, peopled by only about 50 million of the world’s billions of human beings, bandies frightening statistics and ratios of just how many people who, unbeknown to us, live in our midst privately harbouring this ‘virus’ of depression. But the sad thing is: since we do not know much about the condition nor do we have the identities of the sufferers WE UNKNOWINGLY HARASS THEM EVERY DAY, HARRY THEM, CALL THEM STUPID, DISLIKE THEM, WITH THE RESULT THAT A LOT OF THEM COMMIT SUICIDE WHEREAS YOU FIND A FRACTION THAT MAY COME AT YOUR DOOR GUNS BLAZING BEFORE TAKING THEIR OWN LIFE! And we will usually say ‘Mr or Miss So-and-so finally snapped against her own boss’).

The horrors of depression are not the focus of this post. I would rather put my microscopic lens on a thirty-year old Kenyan (Miss Kulwa Moi) who lifted the veil on this condition, at least to me, her Facebook Friend. Naturally her name, Kulwa, has been altered to protect her standing in a global society that still finds depression as a taboo subject where ‘depression is a condition suffered only by weaklings’.

Secondly, please do not take my advice to Kulwa (or even what you have read so far) as the bible truth about either depression and the low blood pressure which seems to the second affliction of Kulwa’s. I am not a doctor; and I will advise you to see a qualified doctor if either or both conditions afflict you. He or she will probably refer you to a specialist known as psychiatrist.

In the same vein,if you have got money to waste and your life to play with,GO AND SEE A WITCHDOCTOR/SHAMMAN/PROPHET/SEER ETC for this condition. However, it is not the aim of this post to send hither or thither; my aim being just to help society lift a veil on a subject talked about in more hush-hush terms than sex and political oppression put together! Talking of which, I think corrupt politicians and sexual predators thrive on depression where one of its symptoms may well be FEARS, PHOBIAS, AND ANXIETY SPELLS! What Banana Republic politician in power would not relish a huge dose of fear for him?

I have not edited my conversation with Kulwa; as such it stands in both English and Kiswahili (or the little Swahili I think I know). The English is of a different colour from the Kiswahili. Let blog author and readership help each other here: I have done my part to lift the conversation from Facebook to this blog post. You do your part by seeking a translator on line to give you the message in English or Kiswahili (whatever individual case it may be) for your desired text. You will probably have to copy the requisite text and paste it on the translator of which such translators are many on the Web.

But please enjoy the conversation if you are bilingual in Kiswahili and English.

The only word I am prepared to translate for you from the Kiswahili to English is the one that in particularly all the South African native languages, as led by Afrikaans, means “stools” or “faeces”. I am defending myself in advance here as Kulwa refers to me by the same word at the very beginning of our dialogue! Do you know why…? BECAUSE IN KISWAHILI THE WORD (“KAK-A”) DOES NOT MEAN WHAT WE MEAN IN SOUTH AFRICA, RATHER IT MEANS “ELDER-BROTHER”

KULWA

I miss you so much, Kaka. Mimi mwenzio naumwa.