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by Simiyu Barasa

Special to the G21

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G21 AFRICA - Kenya: The Drinking Country - Simiyu Barasa takes a bemused look at a new law meant to motify the drinking habits and attitudes of his countrymen.

Simiyu Barasa

Nairobi, KENYA - For a Kenyan, it is absolutely amazing, isn't it? That Charles Kennedy, Britain's Liberal Democratic Leader, is forced to resign from leading the party position due to alcoholism, while George Best, England's legendary footballer, is mourned as a hero at almost the same period in time. Maybe one should agree with Kennedy's79 year old father, Ian, as quoted in the Mail Sundays ago saying that "this has nothing to do with drink or my son's leadership, this has to do with a bunch of political plotters ... "

Many in Kenya would agree with Ian. In the same three month period when Best was dying and Kennedy being forced into resignation, Kenyans - so long used to downing their Tuskers and Pilsners late into the night before driving their way home - were being assaulted by a new gadget called the "Alco-blow", a breat halyser that now ensures that you cant drink more than two beers and drive on the Kenyan road without a policeman hauling you off into custody. The gadget is meant to detect blood-alcohol levels of 0.08 and above, the same as the U.S. legal limit, roughly two and a half beers. What a spoil-sport for Kenyans who have for years driven under enough alcohol because the popular saying that "though I stagger, the car knows the ways home".

It is common knowledge that most of our political leaders are always high on alcohol when they are not high on more sinister stuff. Read the newspapers; we have Members of Parliament being caught in dingy corners of Kisumu urinating on ATM machines after mistaking them for a urinal, drunk MPs punching each other, some caught in Red Light districts like K Street drunk and picking up commercial sex workers, as well as others being shot dead in some of the riskiest backstreet bars in this city - where even thugs never venture into unless they are plotting a major robbery. If Kennedy was in Kenya, he would have had a field day and still be leading a party, whether a drinking party or a political one.

So oblivious to the drinking menace are we that the popular pages in the entertainment magazines are photo spreads of which hip hop star has been snapped having blacked out in which joint, always with a semi-celebratory caption.

So when the police brought in the Alco-blow, in the true Kenyan spirit of resistance, every imbiber was against it and one guy (appropriately named Wanjohi which translates to 'the owner of the brew') rushed to the courts to try and stop the police from using the gadget saying it is not gazetted and two beers have never caused any harm.

Simply put, it is appropriate in Kenya to be an alcoholic and be a political leader but criminal for you to drink two beers and drive a car.

In reality, however, Kenya's drinking has always been a problem to all other parties except the drinkards themselves and the brewers. According to research by the Kenya Medical Research Institute, alcohol abuse affects 70 percent of families in Kenya. The government had to be forced to formulate a comprehensive alcohol policy in the country.

In November 2001, over 140 people died and scores of others lost their eye sight after consuming an illegal ethanol-laced alcoholic drink.

In June 2005 , illegal brew - laced with industrial alcohol - caused the deaths of 49 people and more than 174 people were hospitalized after drinking the homemade 'kwona mbee' (literally: "see the way ahead") brew containing methanol - a toxic wood alcohol added to the concoction to give it more kick.

Kenya also has one of the world's highest roadway death-rates, averaging more than 3,000 a year for a population of 30 million.

But beer has its own defenders. It's no wonder the brewers do not have to employ Public Relations blitzes like their cigarette counterparts whenever the government threatens to unleash barriers to consumption and advertisements. Rough estimates say that the alcohol beverage industry contributes Ksh 12 billion (about 153 million US dollars) to the economy. (Most of it is spent to treat people with alcohol abuse related ailments.)

No wonder then that instances where women in Kangemi, Muranga and Limuru have raided local brew dens as well as regular bars, complaining that their men are becoming economically lazy and sexually inactive, they have been treated with hoots of derisive laughter and soon forgotten. To many single ladies in Kenya, the problem with (especially) Nairobi men is that they prefer their keroro while watching Arsenal Vs Man U in pubs instead of at home having some pillow talk.

The International Anglican Family Network has stated what is rather obvious in Kenya, that the inversion of economic status among Kenyan males is squarely due to alchohol and many families are now more dependant on their womenfolk than males who need more napkins than the babies due to their bed-wetting after drinking binges.

For a nation famed for world class tourist sights, very few Kenyan males have visited these sights, complaining that they are too expensive. But, on average, a Kenyan male uses two thousand shillings every weekend - at the minimum - on drinks and roast goat, never missing a weekend. Savings are not easy to come by for most males. Worse, bars like giving their customers credit during hard times 'when the month is at the corner' to be repaid when month-end comes and salaries are remitted.

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They might be famous in Western countries but the introduction of Kenya's first Breathalyzers - a new phenomena in Africa, has left most Nairobians lamenting and regretting that Kenya is always at the forefront of new technology acquisition among most of its African neighbors. (To its credit, Uganda beat us on this one, they got Alco-blowed a year earlier than us.)

It now seems that there is nowhere to hide for the Kenyans who drink.

Former Nairobi Provincial Commissioner John Kaguthi (now Director of the National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse, NACADA) started the war against alcohol years ago by outlawing the operations of nightclubs within the residential areas. These clubs had mushroomed all over the place and were not only noisy, but alos said to be sex dens.

Kenyans simply found a way around it. Entrepreneurs took advantage of the fledgling economic times and raided eating joints in the City Centre and other businesses that were closing down, turning them into bars. Moi Avenue, the main inner city street, is a good example. From the former US Embassy to where it meets Jeevanjie Gardens, what was once a place for family lunch time treats is now full of bars that are always full. Kanu street in Nakuru takes the credit for being the most notorious, the whole street is infamous for pubs wall to wall.

Come the new NARC regime, and the current Nairobi PC Francis Sigei launched another alcohol blow, literally. He revived an old colonial rule that was not out of the books yet but long ignored. The ruling stated that only those licensed as nightclubs could operate until morning; all the other drinking joints could only operate until 11 PM sharp.

The resulting objections were deafening, prompting President Kibaki (himself a recently recovered alcoholic) to always interject his speeches with calls for people to stop kurega rega na kukula pombe, loitering and drinking themselves silly. Such a fashionable thing it was that Nonini, Kenya's controversial rapper, penned the song keroro that seemed to jibe the authorities by saying that he wishes that while in his mother's womb, instead of amniotic fluid it was all full of keroro for he still feels he hasn't yet had enough time in this world to drink. It still is at the top of charts years down the line.

Sigei won this round, and Nairobians resorted to opening pubs in residential areas where - once it hit eleven - they would close the doors and dim the lights, drinking themselves silly, knowing they were a minimum staggering distance from home. They would simply bribe the occasional cop who ventured into the estates to nose around.

But Sigei announced last week that there will be no more licencing of Estate Pubs, driving the final nail of despair into liquor lovers who had just recovered from the menacing Alco-blow obstacle by drinking where there is minimum staggering distance home with no driving incurred.

Not that I love my pilsner more, but I believe that to win the war against alcoholism is not about gadgets and laws, it is about changing peoples attitudes first.

In October, a script editor from Britain came over for a project we were working on. On the first evening we went out, she totally refused to drink as she was the one driving. Despite our pleas of 'the car can find its way home', she could not forgive herself for even taking a sip when driving. A month later the Alco-blow literally came, and she was amazed at the resistance it faced.

Before the gadgets were unleashed straight from the skies and onto Kenyan roads, the government and NACADA should have run a prolonged sensitization campaign over the dangers of alcoholism in the media and everywhere, to prepare Kenyans psychologically for a change of drinking habits. In a country where family values are highly upheld, showing how alcohol sinks many families would have opened hearts to save many.

At the moment, while families rejoice that Alco-blow means their men coming home earlier, their men are putting copper coins under their tongue after exceeding two beers to cheat the gadget - among an array of other absurd tricks to beat it (like there are now drivers for hire near traffic roadblocks: you drink silly, detour to a petrol station a few meters from the roadblock, hire one of these drivers to ferry you across the police for a hundred shillings, then he alights and heads back to the station to wait for another drunk driver while you drive yourself smack into a tree and your wife into early widowhood).

It is all about behaviour change. And the first people to be vetted should be our parliamentarians, with an Alco-blow at the entrance to the chambers. That way we would have more sober debates in the House (or, God forbid, a perennial lack of quorum.)

No wonder the Bible says it all, " Do not gaze at wine when it is red ... .in the end it bites like a snake and poisons like a viper". How true for Charles Kennedy, but then, this was one of those instances where staying in Kenya is definitely better for a politician rather than in London - where even having spin doctors led by Anna Werrin and a wife like Sarah Gulding can't cover up your love for the bottle.

AUTHOR'S NOTE AT PRESS TIME: Yesterday [23 January], the Kenyan high court stopped the police from using the Alco-blow for thirty days with an injunction caused by a citizen saying it is not gazetted.