 Good afternoon and welcome to the touch and here on Y244. It is the World Cup month and everyone is actually thinking about what the World Cup is and what you are going to do to expect what will be happening in Qatar 2022. A very difficult change of times that this World Cup will be happening this time, not the usual June, July when we usually expect the World Cup, but what can we say, we are here and we are going to enjoy the World Cup. Now joining me here in studio is one legendary player of FC Leopold, Sami Umbisa who is joining us here to talk about one serious conversation and that is the importance of self-care and mental health and what happens when it comes and it is included with the people of sports and also the larger community, not even the people of sports. Sami, welcome to Y244. How are you doing my brother? I'm doing well. Thank you so much for having me here today. Yes, talk about change of careers. People usually don't talk about it but it's usually a big conversation when we have got such a conversation and someone like you coming also to the studio. Yes, sports to now to the career field. How did it happen? I think this came out of hard thinking through good goals that you set towards understanding that sports or talent will never be there forever. There's a time when you have to progress to other seasons of life and so that's when now from good goals setting and focusing on wanting to achieve a career then you decide which path you take. And for example for me I went into the addictions field where there is mental health, psychology and wellness and I find it very fulfilling because it helped me just to carry on with the same discipline of sports into these other disciplines that I'm now using in my career. Well, I just jumped with the gun there but now let's start. Who is Sami Umbisa? Thank you so much. So Sami Umbisa is currently an addiction professional specializing in prevention, treatment and recovery of those who have already gone through treatment and this one I'm doing at a private sector where we are supporting people to not to get to the addictions. And if at all they are in there, get them into treatment and for those who have gone through treatment therefore can go into the recovery phase which is very important because then it helps to reduce or minimize the chances of relapse. And in my area I am focusing more on sports people. I have the passion for helping sports people not to get into addiction. And your love for sports actually and helping sports people has to come more that you played for FC Leopards, you played for Kenya under 20 and the legend has reside from back in the day on Serian FC. How are those days? These days we remember them. And I remember the days when you know you are meeting bigger teams like Mumiya Suga or FC Leopards itself when you are in Osirian. And they are the days that actually would say I have not seen again even when I watched the matches but I think times have changed. There's a shift in the way people view football but then there is always room for improvement. And actually when we talk about mental health and sports and also mental health in general at the moment it's a big crisis worldwide. Everybody is talking about it and you look at even us here as sports take hold as there was a time we went to Mombasa for a big conversation concerning mental health and sports. You look at our athletes have actually gone up to the levels of committing suicide. We have gone to the levels of homicide people are killing each other and this all comes down to mental health. And if we look at it from a level where what can be the main causes of this problem here in our country? So currently let me speak from the time we had covid. During covid there was quite a lot of things that changed. How we interacted was minimized. The you know day to day income and financial status for people really was disrupted. We had many families losing loved ones and all these things put together compounded a very high stress threshold for families and individuals. So at the moment the trend that you are seeing many people especially athletes getting into addiction could be as a result of one people having to want to you know cushion themselves from the pain. The traumas that they have accumulated from the various areas of their lives. It could be also because many people don't want to find to wait for long term solutions. People want solutions like now. So when this stress comes in and we are not able to detect it or to you know combat it in the right way we end up now you know medicating on either a substance so that we can feel good. I take alcohol slip over this problem hoping that tomorrow I wake up the problem will not be there then I find the problem is still there. So that is also another reason and also just because people are using my peers if I'm a sports person and there's another athlete I've seen on maybe the NBA a basketball is using and I'm a footballer here and I think this will help me get muscle. It will help me perform well. This drug will help me to recover better. Then I tried before I know it I'm into addiction and I cannot perform at the sports arena. And then also we know the shift in the social fabric. There is a lot of turmoil. There is a lot of hate which is also resulting from some of those reasons that I've mentioned earlier and you find that tolerance has now gone. We don't tolerate other people. We don't listen to or we don't want to see the problem as it is. We must actually we must problems and these problems will work with us forever before we know it. It has taken us to rock bottom and then it is very sad. In our case here back home we saw football which I've actually covered for some time now. Yes. Also there is I think something to do with the what you said societal pressure because when you are a footballer here in the country just say you finished your high school joined now a club here in the country but you are not progressing. You are still stuck in that club and that's where you are. Your salary is minimal with the problems that are happening around the game. Let's be also another major problem that we have. Yes. The financial front because then our clubs are not giving the footballers or the other athletes contracts that can sustain them. You know somebody will barely get all the meals in a day and you have to go for sessions to you know practice and prepare for the for the marches. So what you're saying in terms of the societal pressure is very high. It's a young sportsperson recently married or planning to get married and after getting married cannot put food on the table or cannot sustain the family and therefore that stress pushes them to want to you know deal with this problem and again they don't deal with the problem in the right way. Therefore they end up using a drug or say alcohol so that this problem can go away and before they know it they are into that cycle and it gets them into addiction. Well we are if you are just training us here on the touch line I'm Robert Osoro and I'm hanging out with the director of Vitality Wellness and also Fahari Wellness which deals with mental counselling and mental health and that is what we are talking about here on the touch line at Y254 at Mirumbiosoro at Sike Maxwell is where you can find us on social media and also share with us your stories also in sports and also in this category of mental health. Off the camera you told me of a story of where you met your fuma player, a fuma player you played with. Yes And he hustled you, he wanted money for food and something. Yes That has got to be painful when you go through that and is that one of the main reasons you started a company that deals with helping sports people? Exactly and you've just nailed it. Actually that situation took me days to process. It was very difficult for me to see somebody I used to see even on television somebody was you know in the limelight of the Kenyan football only to realize that he could not even get a meal and from that point I thought how then can I use the skills I have to transfer them practically support people that are in a space that have been before And at that point then we came up with the Fahari wellness and we've been able to do quite a lot in terms of outreach talking to you know like sports teams at school level and that's where now we have focused so much because we know if a young sports person is told about the dangers of drugs or a young sports person is told about financial management at an early stage by the time they get into the league level they can make better choices and of course again from that story you have mentioned it is very sad that even eventually this gentleman could not recover well from it because it had already caused serious mental disturbances for him and right now we are actually working closer to see that many many other players or many other sports people don't end up the same way this is from a professional perspective which is yours but the damage also does not only touch the athlete or the person directly but the damage also goes further than that because it also touches with family it also touches with the people around you how do you deal with that so when it comes to a full blown situation where somebody is already into addiction and we are saying now that's what we call somebody who is having a substance use disorder yes it means then this person needs treatment and we have been supporting such people to point them to places they can get treatment in private sector or even in government hospitals for example madari hospital yes has one very good rehab that can help somebody who's struggling with substance abuse and then we have also while these people are going through the treatment followed up to see now after treatment what will happen yes and of course these things require support from all stakeholders it requires government to come in it requires the ministry to be vigilant and create policies that even as this special people are participating in sports they are prepared to face the world after sports so policies need to come in ensuring that management of the clubs and the teams and even the national team itself is done very well when there is funding the funding should be distributed in a equitable way so that even the sports people can sustain themselves off the playing ground or off the truck and if that is done I am very sure that it will reduce the burden of these families that have been supporting this person when they are in active sports now just being left desperate and at family level in addiction we say addiction actually is a family disease yes it actually affects the person and the people in the family so you find either in the family also we have people who have been enabling that behavior or who have been you know not doing what it takes to prevent that behavior and once that behavior comes out then this person requires to go for treatment and treatment can bring very good results I can encourage anyone in the sports fraternity who finds themselves into any form of addiction to seek professional help they can get better you can always recover from addiction yeah yeah because this conversation usually goes it's a tricky conversation because you look at a kongestina chain a case example of actually the boxing legend kongestina yes and if it was not for the fuma Nairobi gavana Mike Sonko coming to her rescue you could see how that impact it has had on a kongestina and everything that has been happening there but now the question will be how do you get out of that that that is the question and when you talk you told me about the point of self-care how does this come in how does how now does self-care come in for majorly now for the sports people and these athletes very good question so self-care needs to start at the point that you have declared yourself a sports person and it's one of the things you have to do very well is your lifestyle trying to live moderately sometimes sports can bring a lot of money but that money if it's not converted into tangible things then you find that you struggle once this money has reduced or disappeared so somebody developing a lifestyle that is sustainable and a lifestyle that keeps the same discipline that they get in the sports like sports tells you in the morning you'll go for practice in the afternoon you have to eat at certain time and sleep a bit go back to the practice session so that kind of a discipline needs to be carried on into the lifestyle secondly setting goals that are realistic yes you know you have the money you have the millions for example but again you don't invest yeah or you don't put this money where it will sustain you once you don't have the energy in your legs to run or to play that football so goal setting is also a very important aspect if you want to do self-care the other thing is your general nutrition do you sleep enough yeah do you manage the stress when the stress comes because stress can build into other things that if it was not managed well it can cause you trouble like we are talking about addiction now the other thing is now once you have set the goals you need to continue educating yourself yes about you know creating or developing skills that are of the talent talent as I said can reach a point and it will end so it's good just to learn a skill and skills are in different ways and things that you think you'll be able to do even after the sport we also have the importance of somebody now realizing that age yes versus talent there are things that you cannot avoid age will happen whichever way you become older and so being aware of the times the seasons it's also very important so that you don't end up becoming miserable yes and one thing that I've wanted to encourage teams is to come up with something like Asako where footballers or athletes of any kind can invest some little money and this money can be turned into maybe an insurance policy or they can use this money you know to develop into like just the same way we have doctors association yes we need to have a sports association that also comes up with such investments yes where these footballers or the athletes can always look back and say I put some money somewhere if I pull out and put into something else I can be sustained so on self care again we realize that since we are talking about the drugs and addiction yeah the best way to prevent yourself from getting into addiction is to abstain not to touch because the moment you start using your brain detects that you're using that substance the brain will start telling you I want more of these and now you find yourself into addiction so keeping away from a toxic life can be very important also as part of self care yes and lastly the social life most sports people stop uh when they are stopped the active sport yes you want to just stay at home you need to be sociable you need to interact with the people who are now currently in the sport so that you keep moving getting stuck and now getting into deep into you know stressful moments of thinking these and that can be very dangerous so keeping on going by involving yourself in social life which we call the social wellness yes can help you to deter yourself from getting into those dangerous habits well and then again when we talk about you know the measures that can be helped to help these teams they've talked about policies and everything but what about the teams health departments because when you look at most of our teams or most of the sports in general yes when you look at the health department in our club below in our team yes it is usually the physio or the general doctor and all that so mental health is not taken into consideration yes is this an area where now these teams need to put some consideration into absolutely you know um having the doctor having the physio is good for the physical aspects of the the the the sports people's health but then the mental aspect needs to be given priority because everything starts with the mind yes yes even for these leg to kick there's some communication that has come from the brain to to tell the nerves to you know tell the muscle to respond so I think it is important either to get a general psychologist to be talking to the sports people in every club or even just having some sports psychologists hired at the federation level and they be going to the clubs countrywide yeah and giving free talks because this is taken care of by the federation and I'm sure if that is done so that the coach the coaching teams the management teams and the athletes themselves are taken care of in that space will reduce all these that we are seeing because it's so unfortunate that somebody wins a medal yeah and then after two years you find that this person has ended up in the rehabilitation yes yet the the society looks at this person as a role model yeah so if we want to protect these sports people we have to work hard at government level at club level at the federation level yes so that it's not just left for individual clubs to be doing and in fact the federation the federations can and associations can be encouraging clubs to actually have mental health professionals interact with them at different levels not just when we are having a sports match then that's the time the the psychologist comes in on a Sunday morning when the match is in the afternoon no it it has to be something that is continuous because all these challenges to do with mental health are going to be with us for the rest of the time new regime yes in office with the honorables here cabinet secretary Ababuna Muamba yes and everybody is about the field of play yes that is what everybody is considered everybody talking about hey there's a new sheriff in town everybody is thinking when is football going to be back when are we going to go to the FIFA and all that yes is this the kind of advice he should be listening to because now when you look at the sports people have left also the playing ground yes we have got legends all the way from the 60s who are alive today actually the first medalist in olympics for kenya wilson kupugut is being laid to rest in kericho and you see even what happened to the late joka denge there was a time it was a cab driver you got a legend hendry motego and all that so is this the kind of advice the CS also should be listening to yes i believe that the CS and especially now that we have a CS who has been in the sports ministry before yes he has a good starting point to help the sports fraternity do things differently yeah to approach sports differently and in sports the most active people are the ones that are participating in the sports like the sportsmen themselves the footballers the rugby players all these people should be given very high consideration when it comes to policy management decision making you know all these things put together will help those sports people you've talked about legends who have been found to be suffering yes and trust me you'll find that if you looked at it closely one or two reasons could be from how during their time something was not done well and therefore it has continued to affect them the rest of their life so this is a time where the government with a new CS we can start on a good footing let's put our right foot forward let's do it right we need to go back to african cup we are now cheering other african countries yes wish we also want to be there yeah we also want to participate and and make this country go to a higher level in sports generally yeah yes um from your career point of view as a mental health professional yes we may say that yes and with your company Vitality Wellness and Fahari yes what is exactly now that you do from that professional standing point so basically um as a an addiction professional one of the things I help my clients to achieve is general well-being and good health yes and by so doing I draw techniques and theories and all these that you have to put in place from the fields of psychology the fields of behavior change yes so that this person starts to realize that you only have one life and you need to take care of it yeah so that then you can achieve a better health yeah and so I use skills from all those fields to ensure that my clients can live a better life in terms of their mental aspect and their physical aspect and the general well-being that is important to make them better people well and let's talk about people who can like players now I think you saw one of our former players in Balambala the former fc leopards the captain who actually because of the drugs and everything he ended up becoming blind and all that and it's a tough journey and a long journey to come to a situation where you can realize yourself in that level be content with yourself and go on now because now you are living another life yes how can people get in touch with you and get this help yeah actually the best way to get in touch with me is to I have a number let me read out the number if you want to get in touch with me 0 7 2 3 1 0 6 0 0 9 that's my safari kum number call me up let's have a conversation and if we can help you in the right way we will do so and most of the time as I told you robot is that we've gone all the way to do it even for sports people because we want the sports people to be better we've done it sometimes even out of our own you know provisions to ensure that somebody gets to to reach to the best health possible so feel free call us up and we'll be able to have a better conversation and your team the leopard man has been suffering for some time 24 years now with no trophy with no trophy right haha yes what can we do for you to come back to to the main stage I think we we still we are still in the same kind of a discussion where we just have to do things differently if we have done things in a certain way and never got results why don't we now change and do them differently for example some of the private clubs like fc leopards gorma here if we put money into an investment where we can have fc leopards apartments for example people rent out these houses and these monies are used to take care of the the the club in general including the the ballers or we can have the club buying shares in safari kum yes yes and say we bought 10 million shares what are we getting out of this marchandise selling marchandise to bring the income because all this problem just revolve around finances yes yes you'll you'll fire the chairman you bring in another one but if there's lack of a good financial base we will not move so it starts with us planning on how do we get liquidity on the ground so that now it can spread to touch on the various things that the club needs well and it's also the world cup month world cup is starting actually it's now eight days yes to the world cup which is your team i'm going for the black stars gana yes yes um i'm hopeful that they will go all the way to the finals wow tough one someone let's also say the kami rune will go will go all the way and will meet moroko in that final thanks a lot sami for coming here on the touchline i appreciate your thank you so much much appreciated well we have been talking to sami on base always on addictions professional and has been advising us and talking to us about mental health and the vitalness the importance of self care when it comes to mental health and more so for the sports people and for us the youth in general because mental health is actually affecting us all the way in this life that we have i'm roberosoro let's take a short commercial break when we come back it will be all about the funds on as we digest what will be coming up in the premier league and the world cup here on the touchline and y254