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A Mule’s Story

Anyone who thinks that drug smuggling is glamorous has seen too many unrealistic films, reflects Marcia one day, eight miles in sky and heading North from West Africa to London.

Marcia is a cocaine mule and there could be few more boring jobs, it’s a million miles away from Miami Vice. Not that’s complaining of course. It’s easily the best job she’s ever had, most money she’s ever made. She has no husband but three small children, the eldest just seven, and they are her sole motivation. Marcia doesn’t smoke, rarely drinks, has never taken cocaine and never will. That said she has a good quantity of said drug in her gut right now. It is all wrapped up in impermeable rubber and will never enter her bloodstream. She has no criminal record and is a typical drugs mule. Women, not too young, with no history of crime and preferably single mothers make the best drug mules as all the sensible traffickers know.

Her working day began early. She ate a sensible breakfast, one with a lot of meat that will take a long time to digest. She has dressed in her one smart outfit, put on her flat-glass glasses for respectability, and made her way to the totally unremarkable house the loading point in a back street of Banjul, the capital of The Gambia, where she swallowed the ten ‘grapes’. She inspected each grape carefully before swallowing. One ruptured grape in her stomach would be a fatal overdose of the drug. The cocaine, the purest possible grade, is packed into a condom which is then tied in a knot making a grape-sized and shaped package. The remains of the condom is cut off and discarded. Then it goes inside another condom, in the opposite direction and the procedure is repeated making the grape doubly water-tight. Marcia has nothing to do with the packing. She just turns up at the house, swallows the usual ten grapes of cocaine, washes them down with a little water, checks her watch and heads for the airport. The house is within walking distance of the airport. The woman who gives her the grapes is Martha and Marcia knows practically nothing about her. Marcia’s story, if queried, is that she going to visit her sister in London for a couple of weeks. It’s perfectly plausible and no-one has ever asked her.