Why government hates chang’aa

Nearly every Kalenjin, Luo or Luhya man with middle class pretentions who loves single malt whisky is not averse to drinking chang’aa.

And I am talking senior politicians, academics, medical doctors, magistrates and all manner of professionals, including cops!

When they are in the village, sitting beneath the shade of their favourite trees, swapping tales with their age mates or at funeral wakes, it is chang’aa they sip because this is the drink that defines them as a people the way Guinness defines the Irish. Policemen, who also drink chang’aa, may not know this, but the bottles of mineral water on the dashboards of big cars tearing up escarpments to Nairobi are often repositories of grade one local gin.

I could be wrong of course, but I doubt that any middle class man or woman has ever been arrested for drinking moonshine.  This is because you will never catch them at Mama Pima’s. They order for the stuff and drink it at home. And I will be damned if a nosy assistant chief is going to raid an MP’s home in search of illicit hooch.

But question is, why don’t the wretched of the earth, who get chased like rats from drinking dens, do the same? Why do they insist on going kwa mama pima’s yet they know the risks of getting arrested are pretty high?

Because it is their bar, stupid! They need to hang out with their buddies, slap mama pima’s ample rear, and make lewd jokes — the very same things we do in bars.

Which is why we are being childishly stupid about this. We tax beer and bottled spirits through the roof and then expect poor people to stay sober. Yet it should be pretty obvious that those guys need, nay deserve a drink, more than the thieves who drink and eat themselves to death in Nairobi.

While our problem is that our kids are too fat, too lazy or too spoilt, their problem is that their daughters are likely to run off with the nearest boda boda rider who waves nylon knickers worth Sh20 in their faces.  While we worry about the cost of taking the family for holiday, those guys are stuck in a tiny, smoky hovel with twelve hungry kids and three smelly goats 24/7. While we have the option of sleeping on the couch to melt off a chilly cold war, those brothers have to wait till midnight to whisper to their wives because, I mean, twelve hungry kids have ears. They need a drink — badly, you get?

Why then don’t we want them to drink chang’aa, which is just gin, anyway? Why is this origi Kenyan produce prohibited while cheap, toxic stuff in bottles is sold in ‘wines and spirits’?

I think nothing annoys the government more than seeing people happy, especially if that happiness is tax free.  Second, big people hate being equal to the hoi polloi. After all, a man who has drunk chang’aa worth 50 bob and another who has flashed a Sh5,000 single malt down the Golf club’s urinal stagger home farting the same way. All equal.

It is only that the chang’aa man is happier. How we loath him!