Former socialite Peninah  Lema Munyithya, popularly known as Pesh Lema, landed in trouble with the Ghanaian authorities in 2015 at the prime of her career as a socialite.

She was sentenced to jail for 10 years after she was found smuggling 4kg of heroin to the country. She wasn’t aware that she was transporting the illegal drug, until when she was about to leave a Ghanaian airport to begin her vacation in the West African country.

She was however lucky to be released after 7 years and six months. She left the Ghanaian prison in December 2022 and returned to Kenya in February 2023 to take care of her ailing mother who passed away last Tuesday.

“I’m still healing. In that place(prison), even if there was no mistreatment, the fact that someone locks you up and takes away the keys incase of anything you have to call out for help, you can’t open for yourself is traumatising. When you get out you have to look for help from church, counsellors and so on,” she told Oga Obinna in an interview.

Pesh’s appearance isn’t anything close to that of a person who has served a prison term and she says it’s because of  God’s favour.

In prison, her eyes were opened on how innocent people are used for drug trafficking without their knowledge.

In her case, as she was heading to Ghana, a friend of her friend’s boyfriend offered her a bigger suitcase to carry her luggage. The heroin, which she was supposed to deliver to a person in Ghana, had been carefully hidden in the bag inside a brown envelope. Pesh wasn’t aware of it as she had checked the suitcase thoroughly and it was completely empty by the time she was packing her belongings.

“The way they arrange those things you will never suspect. When I was given that suitcase, I opened even the smallest zip there was nothing. I never imagined that thing was implanted there,” she shared.

Aside from tricks on suitcases, Pesh said that she learnt that those who want to traffic drugs are smart and sometimes setup those they have picked to smuggle drugs to the police at their destination.

“One of the inmates, I think she was from Chile  she was arrested with a suitcase, in most cases you get maybe someone has been setup, the police arrested her, searched her whole body and the suitcase,  there was nothing, It was a plastic suitcase, the suitcase was the  cocaine. They searched without success until they scratched it,” she said.

She noted that once you are arrested with the drugs, its hard to convince anyone that you didn’t know about them.

“Sometimes you can bring the owner and both of you are sentenced,” Pesh said.

“There are people who are there(in prison), they have not been framed, they admit they have done it for years. They tell you how these business is conducted,” she went on.

Pesh further said that sometimes people are framed at the airport.

“Your come with your bag, those who work from the airport swap it and plant drugs, by the time you are coming out of the checkpoint, the sniffing dog has already discovered them.

“Sometimes you are at the airport and someone sees you have a small bag and asks you to check in with theirs and you just do that. Or they see a police and pretend they are going to relieve themselves in the washrooms and leave you with their luggage to watch for them and that is how they leave then you are the one who gets arrested with it. Even if they come back they will deny the luggage is not theirs, the bag is in your hands,” Pesh said.

Another trick trafficking syndicates use is sending parcels to relatives through those travelling abroad.

“People in abroad are like I have my cousin there, take this flour to them. When someone tells you that, leave that flour in your house, go buy Kavagara(Raha flour) and carry the one you have bought because you don’t know what is inside the other flour,” she warned.

While in prison, Pesh was able to enrol for a B.Com degree program. She was however unable to finish as the program came at a time she was about to leave prison.