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Making an exit from the local where the resident mkono gamu drinkers like Diameter, the political analyst, has been throwing ‘helicopter’ rounds, is not as easy as filling the bladder with five bottles of ‘head cleaners’ from the said mkono glue.
Making an exit after swilling 10 bottles without kurudisha mkono is usually a combination of science, anthropology and chemistry.
Science, because you need to do mental calculation of how many bottles Diameter drinks before he starts seeing with his mouth with a little help from the eyes. Anthropology comes in when there is a need to understand the habits, motivations and behaviour of sots at the local, where they start talking louder than the Lover’s Rock blaring from the music system.
Some, like Kot-Kot, hardly notice it’s almost 11pm, the official ‘Mututho Hour’ for staggering home to his long-suffering wife for whom the smell of alcohol equals imminent miscarriage when she was pregnant with their third brat, meaning Kot-Kot will benefit from three free laptops from the government of ‘Kusema na Ku-tender.’
Making an exit from the local, where Kang’ethe has offered to share his kicwha mbuzi chemsha with pilipili mbili and a cup of thufu each, also requires knowledge of chemistry, since alcohol is not fermented porridge or the aforementioned thufu spiced with a lot of red pepper from Kinangop.
And so it is that when Owish has been employing a number of tactics to make an exit without arousing any suspicions. One is the ‘not empty’ glass decoy, in which he leaves slightly over a tot in his glass of Double Black of Johnny Mtembezi on the double, creating the impression that he’s ‘within.’
His other gambit is leaving the escalating bar bill after winking at Nyambu not to “kuleta muhadhara” in a manner to suggest he’s not cleared yet.
Peeing and over staying with the sole aim of ambling out when sots are deep in bar banter is yet another tactic, which is sometimes not as effective as the habit of taking fictitious phone calls outside the local, where Gachiri the taxi driver is waiting to vroom off Owish home alone in cold July.
