FROM SMOKE TO HOPE
By Emerson Sam Navaya
When I published the story of James Tinto on my facebook page, a former student whose life I had seen dramatically altered in the aftermath of substance abuse, I did not imagine that another story would come knocking at my door so soon. Tinto's predicament had already unsettled me because I had known him before the darkness of his present circumstances. I had taught him English Literature when he was still a young and brilliant student preparing for his Malawi School Certificate of Education. I had seen the promise in him. I had seen the future before it became obscured. His story made me ask uncomfortable questions about drugs, mental health, rehabilitation and the responsibility of society towards young people who become trapped in substance abuse. But while that story was still fresh in my mind, Elson Matemba, popularly known as Kasabonya, emerged with a story of his own.
I knew Kasabonya from my days at Rev. Prof. Immanuel Mlenga Academy in Zomba, around 2016 or 2017. He was one of the young people whose paths crossed mine during my teaching years. Today, however, he approached me not simply as a former student or someone seeking to reminisce about the past, but as a man willing to open the most difficult pages of his life and allow me to read them. His story, like Tinto's, carries the painful imprint of drugs and substance abuse, but there is something particularly striking about Kasabonya's confession: he does not speak only about what drugs have taken from him. He speaks about what he wants to do with the life that remains.
As he began telling me his story, I could sense that this was not going to be an ordinary conversation. He was not interested in hiding behind excuses, nor was he trying to paint himself as a victim without responsibility. He spoke as somebody who had spent considerable time reflecting on the road he had travelled and had finally reached a point where silence no longer seemed useful. He wanted to speak because he had seen the consequences of substance abuse from within. He had experienced the temptation, the excitement, the gradual dependence and, ultimately, the consequences that followed.
Kasabonya explained that his journey into smoking did not begin with a grand intention to destroy his life. It began, as many destructive habits often do, almost innocently. It was fun. It was experimentation. It was something that seemed harmless at the beginning, perhaps something done out of curiosity, peer influence or the desire to experience what others were experiencing. There was no sign at the beginning that the habit would eventually acquire such power over his life. But what begins as entertainment can sometimes become a chain, and a chain does not always reveal its strength when the first link is placed around someone's life.
Elson Matemba during his dark days| Photo by Elson
"I started smoking because it was fun," was the spirit of his confession.
But the fun did not remain fun.
The habit grew. Its influence became stronger. What had initially appeared to be something he could control gradually became something that began controlling him. The consequences became more serious than he had anticipated, and eventually he found himself confronting a reality that he probably never imagined when he first started smoking. Looking back now, Kasabonya speaks with the painful wisdom of someone who has travelled far enough down a dangerous road to understand where it leads.
There was no glamour in his story.
There was no celebration of drugs.
There was no attempt to make substance abuse appear fashionable.
Instead, there was regret.
There was reflection.
There was an admission that choices made in moments of curiosity can sometimes produce consequences that remain long after the excitement has disappeared.
Kasabonya's story became even more profound when he began speaking about his mental-health struggles. He told me that he had been struggling with paranoid schizophrenia for the past six years. He explained that much of his life had become centred around taking medication, attending therapy and trying to manage a condition that made ordinary things extraordinarily difficult. From the outside, someone might look at him and ask why he was not working, why he was not going back to school or why he was not simply getting on with life. But inside his mind, the battle was different.
"There are things people think are easy," he explained. "Getting a job or going to school might seem like basic things, but for me they can be really hard."
Then came the sentence that stayed with me:
"I get stuck in my head."
Those words gave me a different way of understanding what we often call failure. Society tends to measure people by visible achievements. We celebrate employment, graduation, businesses, houses and financial success. But we rarely see the invisible battles that prevent some people from reaching those milestones. For Kasabonya, simply taking the first step towards a job, school or a new chapter in life could become an enormous psychological struggle.
He told me that sometimes he thinks about doing something for so long that eventually he does nothing at all. That is a difficult reality for someone who still has dreams. He has aspirations. He wants to become productive. He wants independence. He wants success and happiness. The tragedy is that wanting those things does not always mean having the mental strength to pursue them in the way society expects.
Yet there was something encouraging in his confession. He had begun to understand that progress does not always arrive dramatically. Sometimes it arrives in tiny movements that nobody notices.
Kasabonya called them "baby steps."
I found that expression powerful.
A baby does not wake up one morning and decide to run. First comes movement. Then crawling. Then standing. Then falling. Then trying again. Eventually, the child walks. Society, however, often expects adults to leap from failure directly into success. We rarely celebrate the small victories that precede transformation.
Kasabonya is learning to celebrate those small victories.
Taking his medication consistently can be a victory.
Attending therapy can be a victory.
Resisting the temptation to return to old habits can be a victory.
Getting out of bed on a difficult morning can be a victory.
Thinking about returning to school can be a victory.
Looking for employment can be a victory.
Even deciding that he wants a better life can be a victory.
He told me that he had previously been inconsistent with his medication, going on and off treatment. But now he wants to take his treatment more seriously. He wants to put in the work and remain committed to his treatment. I could hear something different in his voice when he said this. It was not the voice of somebody claiming that everything was suddenly fine. It was the voice of someone acknowledging that recovery requires participation.
And then came the part of his confession that perhaps moved me most.
Kasabonya told me that he wants to join the rest of the world in speaking against drug and substance abuse.
He has seen enough.
He has experienced enough.
He has suffered enough to understand that there is nothing romantic about drugs.
He does not want his experience to remain a private tragedy.
He wants it to become a warning.
He wants his mistakes to become a lesson for somebody else.
He wants to tell young people that what begins as "fun" can eventually become something they desperately wish they had never touched.
There is a particular power in hearing such a warning from someone who has lived through the consequences. A teacher can stand before students and explain the dangers of drugs. A health professional can describe the medical consequences. A journalist can report the statistics. A parent can warn a child. But someone who has personally experienced the consequences speaks from a different place.
Kasabonya is not speaking from a textbook.
He is speaking from experience.
He is saying, in effect:
I have been there. I know where this road can lead. Do not romanticise it.
His decision to advocate against substance abuse is therefore not merely an intellectual exercise. It is deeply personal.
He told me that he would be willing to volunteer himself to any organisation, group or campaign that advocates saying "No" to drugs and substance abuse and promotes awareness of mental-health challenges. He does not necessarily expect to be paid for telling his story. He wants his experience to have meaning.
That struck me deeply.
Perhaps there is a form of redemption in turning one's painful past into a warning sign for others.
Perhaps the person who once fell into the trap can eventually become the person standing beside the trap telling others not to fall into it.
Kasabonya's story also brought me to the question of sin, repentance and transformation. In his own reflection, he connected his decision to quit smoking with the Biblical image of sins being made "white as snow." The imagery is powerful because it speaks of cleansing, renewal and the possibility of starting again.
He does not pretend that the past never happened.
He cannot erase it.
He cannot travel back to the first day he smoked and make a different decision.
But he can make a decision today.
He can stop.
He can seek help.
He can remain committed to treatment.
He can speak.
He can warn others.
He can try again.
And perhaps that is what repentance and recovery have in common: both begin with an honest admission that something has gone wrong and a willingness to walk in a different direction.
Kasabonya's story therefore became bigger than a story about smoking.
It became a story about consequences.
It became a story about mental health.
It became a story about accountability.
It became a story about hope.
Most importantly, it became a story about a human being refusing to allow his past to have the final word.
I thought about James Tinto again.
Two former students.
Two different stories.
Two lives touched by the devastating consequences of substance abuse.
And two reminders that behind the words "drug addict," "mentally ill," or "substance abuser" is a human being with a history.
This is where society needs to change its language and, perhaps more importantly, its attitude.
We are often very quick to condemn.
We call people names.
We laugh at them.
We mock their behaviour.
We circulate videos of them on social media.
We turn their suffering into entertainment.
But how often do we stop and ask what happened?
How often do we ask what kind of support they need?
How often do we ask whether they can access treatment?
How often do we ask what happens after treatment?
And how often do we ask whether someone who has recovered can become part of the solution?
Kasabonya is offering himself as part of that solution.
He wants his story to become a warning.
He wants to stand before young people and tell them what he wishes he had known earlier.
He wants to tell them that the first cigarette, the first substance, the first experiment or the first "fun" experience may not look dangerous at the beginning. But habits can grow, and consequences can become heavier than the excitement that started them.
His message is not one of perfection.
It is one of experience.
He is saying that people can make mistakes and still choose another direction.
That is why I found his willingness to speak so important.
He is not asking us to forget his past.
He is asking us to understand it.
He is not asking society to excuse every decision he made.
He is asking society to recognise that human beings can change.
He is not asking for pity.
He is asking for an opportunity to contribute.
And perhaps that is what makes his story worth telling.
When Kasabonya told me that he wanted to volunteer with organisations advocating against drugs and substance abuse and supporting mental-health awareness, I began to see his experience differently. His pain could become a resource. His past could become a classroom. His mistakes could become lessons. His voice could become a warning to someone standing at the beginning of the same road.
There is something profoundly human about that.
We often imagine advocacy as something done by experts in offices, people wearing professional titles and speaking through microphones. But sometimes the most powerful advocate is the person who can stand before others and say:
"I know what this can do because it happened to me."
Kasabonya can say that.
He has seen the smoke.
He has felt its consequences.
And now he wants to help others choose a different path.
As our conversation continued, I realised that his confession was not really about asking people to feel sorry for him. It was about reclaiming his voice. For years, his story may have been told by circumstances, by illness, by substances and by other people's perceptions of him. Now he wants to tell it himself.
That is powerful.
Because when someone begins telling their own story, they begin taking ownership of their narrative.
Kasabonya's journey is far from finished. He knows that. He understands that there may be difficult days ahead. He knows that recovery does not happen simply because someone makes a public declaration. There may be setbacks. There may be temptations. There may be days when his mind becomes difficult to manage. But he has made a decision to keep moving.
One day at a time.
One step at a time.
One appointment at a time.
One decision at a time.
One honest conversation at a time.
And now, one message at a time.
The message is simple:
Say no to drugs and substance abuse.
But his story adds weight to those words.
He is not saying them because they sound good.
He is saying them because he has learned their meaning through experience.
As I reflected on our conversation, I realised that Kasabonya's story had changed something in me. When James Tinto's story came to me, I saw the devastating consequences of substance abuse through the eyes of a former teacher meeting a former student years later. With Kasabonya, I was given something different: the voice of a person who has lived through the struggle and is now willing to speak about it.
One story showed me the wound.
The other showed me someone trying to turn the wound into a warning.
And perhaps Malawi needs both.
We need to see the consequences.
But we also need to listen to those who are trying to recover.
We need prevention.
We need treatment.
We need rehabilitation.
We need mental-health awareness.
We need families that understand rather than simply condemn.
We need communities that support rather than ridicule.
We need institutions that do more than react after a crisis.
And we need people like Kasabonya who are willing to say, "I have been there, and I do not want another person to go through what I went through."
When I look back at the young man I knew at Rev. Prof. Immanuel Mlenga Academy around 2016 or 2017 and compare him with the man speaking to me today, I see a journey filled with pain, but I also see something else.
I see possibility.
The story of Kasabonya is not a story of a perfect man who conquered every problem.
It is a story of a man who admits that he has struggled.
A man who admits that his choices had consequences.
A man who has stopped smoking.
A man who wants to take his treatment seriously.
A man who wants to talk openly about mental health.
A man who wants to volunteer his voice to organisations fighting drug and substance abuse.
A man who wants his past to become somebody else's warning.
And perhaps that is where his real recovery begins.
Not in pretending that the past did not happen, but in refusing to allow the past to determine the future.
Kasabonya once smoked because he thought it was fun.
Today, he speaks because he knows it was not.
Yesterday, perhaps he needed somebody to warn him.
Today, he wants to become that warning for somebody else.
And as he prepares to join the wider conversation against drugs and substance abuse, I hope society will listen—not because his story is perfect, but because it is real.
There are young people standing at the beginning of the road he travelled.
There are others already halfway down it.
And there are some desperately looking for a way back.
A poster showing his confession| Photo Designed by Elson Matemba
If Kasabonya can use his voice to reach even one of them, then perhaps his painful journey will have produced something beautiful.
Perhaps the smoke can finally clear.
Perhaps the past can become a lesson rather than a prison.
Perhaps the man who once experimented for fun can become a man who speaks for life.
And perhaps, as he believes through his faith, what has been stained by the past can still be made clean.
His story is not over.
It is becoming a message.
And that message is simple:
Do not wait until the fun becomes a prison. Say no to drugs. Seek help when you need it. Protect your mind. Protect your future. And if you have already fallen, remember that asking for help is not weakness—it may be the first step towards finding your way home.
2026EmersonSamNavaya| All rights are reserved
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