Let’s talk about alcohol. I’ll start with a report on alcohol abuse prevalence released this year by the National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (Nacada).
Here we go: Nairobi (18.4 per cent); Western; (13.1 per cent); Rift Valley (10.7 per cent); Eastern (10.6 per cent); Nyanza (9.6 per cent); Coast (8.7 per cent); Central (8.3 per cent, but higher in portable drinks); North Eastern (1.4 per cent). The national average of prevalence is 10.1 per cent.
These figures show that despite a section of leaders trying to ‘regionalise’ the alcoholism problem, it is a national menace that should be tackled as such. Only North-Eastern looks sober. Even that one per cent or so alluded to there as alcohol abusers are probably imports from other drink-prone regions.
This national drinking problem can be tackled at two levels. There are village-made liquors like kang’ara’, busaa, chang’aa and so on. The makers of this illicit stuff do their thing clandestinely and hide their merchandise in all manner of odd places — river beds, cow sheds and even in holes dug inside the shacks they live in.
They usually sell cheap drinks to the villagers around where they live. Once in a while, you’ll see on TV chiefs and their askaris moving around villages destroying this hooch after digging it up from where it is secretly stored. The culprits are arrested and taken to court where they are fined or given short sentences.
Meanwhile, other illegal brewers who escaped the chiefs’ dragnets are going on with business as usual. Their colleagues who were arrested will slither back to the villages and pick up from where they left off. The cycle continues. It would require the chiefs to do no other work than policing village households full-time to stamp out illegal activity. It is not possible. Besides, the brewers keep changing locations. So the brews thrive.
There’s a second level of the alcohol problem, which to me is the most dangerous. These are the toxic drinks sold in rural bars and liquor outlets. They carry exotic brand names that keep changing with confusing rapidity. The difference with homemade drinks is that they are manufactured in known “distilleries” dotted across the country.
The drinks are styled as “wines” and “spirits” and given counterfeit labels like brandy, gin, whisky — whatever. These are not the Johnny Walker or Hennessey or Gilbey’s bottles you are familiar with. These are pure poison. Highly lethal. Many of these wines are described as “fortified”, which is just another way of saying the poison is more concentrated. These are the drinks that are destroying village youth.
The village brewers and even those shady distillers often lace their drinks with methanol. It makes for very potent and dangerous moonshine. Boozers frequently die. Or they go blind. There have also been instances, where the chemicals morticians use for embalming corpses, are used. It’s revolting.
Drunk like a kite
I was astonished when a rural chap once told me he gets sufficiently drunk with only Sh200. It was Christmas. Somebody had offered him a normal beer. He shook his head and instead asked for the 200 bob. He quickly disappeared to a nearby market centre. Within no time he was back, drunk like a kite.
Mark you, these liquor factories are not hidden in the bush. They operate in the open. In fact, most of them are licensed. Licensed by the same government that is frantically trying to eradicate the products they make. The previous government had closed more than two dozen questionable liquor factories.
Many of them were manufacturing very harmful drinks. Since they were licensed and operating legally, the authorities seized on longstanding tax issues they had to close them down. When the new government came to power last year, one of its first actions was to allow these distillers to operate again. Some owners were even given state jobs.
There’s a political campaign to curb the consumption of illegal liquor. That’s fine. However, focusing on small village bars will not help much. Unless you target the actual manufacturers and distributors, the campaign will flop.
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I long ago came to the conclusion that many non-mainstream churches, especially those of the evangelical and Pentecostal flavour, are nests for crooks and criminals. I specifically mean those sects run by unscrupulous charlatans whose sole objective is to fleece as much money as possible from their followers.
We have too many rogues donning clerical collars. They give themselves pompous titles like “Apostle” or “Prophet” and claim to run Godly churches when in fact they’re breeding evil cults. The only thing they worship is money. They lead flashy, extravagant lives from the money extorted from gullible followers.
Worst of all is their mental enslavement of their followers. Go to any evangelical or Pentecostal church and you’ll find poor souls, so indoctrinated they’ve become emotional wrecks. Completely brainwashed. This serves a purpose. It eases the job of conning them out of their money.
The greedy preachers are experts at manipulating the vulnerable. There’s the “kupanda mbegu” device to make the faithful part with their savings. Then fake miracles ensnare the brainwashed more. There’s a preacher who for some reason demands female congregants to remove their innerwear.
Others cane them vigorously, maybe to chase out the Devil. I blame the followers. Time and again they have demonstrated they are weak-minded and foolish. They give away their family land, savings, pensions and even wives to these snake-oil pastors.
Kenya has among the highest number of registered churches in the world. We don’t need all that. They must be regulated. There should be no dispute about that. It is good Interior CS Kithure Kindiki is in agreement. It’s unfortunate we forget too fast. BY DAILY NATION