Ex-Machachari actor Almasi opens up on depression after mother diagnosed with Cancer

Former ‘Machachari’ actor Ian Nene, popularly known as Almasi, the name of the character he played on the show, has come out to reveal that he previously battled a severe bout of depression.

According to Almasi, this was after he found out that his mother – who had raised him by herself since his father was absent - had Cancer, and that it had progressed  to stage four.

Almasi said that hearing his mother break such news to him took a toll on him, such that he was unable to escape the unpleasant negative thoughts related to the illness.

He narrated how, upon hearing the news, the first thought that hit him was that his mother was going to die, adding that this only served to plunge him into drug abuse.

“I got home and then my mom sat me down and she was like Ian I have something to tell you…so I went to hospital and the doctors had a scan and they checked me out and they told me I’ve got Cancer, and then she was like it was breast cancer but then it’s reached stage four so it’s moved to my lungs and I was like ‘oh my God’… and I got so depressed,” he narrated to YouTuber Shivani Pau.

“I’m a Mama’s boy, my mom raised me single-handedly, my father was never really around in my life. And soon as something like that really comes you literally think of the worst. She’s gonna die, then what? So I decide to numb myself with getting higher and higher, but then I was also at the same time inquiring higher and higher. While I was in my room, I just asked God like if you truly exist in this world why do you allow bad things to happen to good people, and I was like my mom’s here, she like serves everyone. My mom just doesn’t serve me and my sister and my younger brother or like our nuclear family but serves even other people outside the community, she likes to help very many people and she’s the one getting Cancer?”

He affirmed that, because at that moment he was questioning God a lot, he began to explore on religion and a friend of his introduced him to Hinduism and took him to the temple.

He disclosed that he started looking for solutions and, during the process, received very satisfying answers.

“Stephanie invited me to the temple. I went and I started learning about it. This was in Nairobi because we have a temple there. They were answering all my questions deeply, you know, and like nothing was washy about faith but like scientifically about how God is maneuvering this world and how he's within this world and he’s without it.  It was a lot of technical science. I knew there was knowledge beyond our understanding and was always inquisitive above the universe,” he said.

Raised in a Christian Catholic home, Almasi described how it was for his family and people around him to embrace the religious path that he had chosen to pursue as a monk.

“I remember my mom’s face when I was coming from the temple and she had told me not to go to the temple again. I came in with some books and I had them hidden under my sweater thinking that she’s not going to see me anyways, I’m just going to run up to my room,” he said.

“And then I got to the door and I opened the door, and she saw me and she was like ‘where are you from’ and I said ‘I was just with a friend.’ And the books started dropping one by one from my shirt, and she looked at me and was like ‘oh my God really these guys have really brainwashed you, they’re changing my son.’”