[SIZE=4]Just thought I’d share below article from THE EAST AFRICAN with you, its long but interesting[/SIZE]
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Kenya’s Trojan Horse bringing a happy, slow death to Uganda youth[/SIZE]
If you ask the proverbial man on the Kampala street today whether he knows Beckham, he will not think about yesterday’s great British footballer. We have moved on.
The most popular Beckham in Uganda today is a potent liquor sold in a plastic sachet. It is one of the few dozen gins that have taken over the country’s hard drinks industry.
The saddest part of these sachet gins is that they have killed and buried the popular waragi, which was so uniquely Ugandan.
The distilled, branded Uganda Waragi, to the “crude” waragi that our men drank in the villages, are barely consumed any more.
And you haven’t yet heard who is to blame for this social-economic reconfiguration – it is “those Kenyans.”
Yes sir, today Kenya’s biggest export to Uganda could easily be something called neutral spirit. And it is also a great source of revenue to the government. It does not get mentioned up there among top taxpayers, because it is not centralised.
A hundred different Ugandan dealers buy the neutral spirit from Kenya, add flavour and pack it in colourful sachets with names like Beckham Gin, Chief, Royal Waragi, Something Vodka, That Waragi and so on. And the working men and women of Uganda cannot have enough of them.
A sachet of gin can fit into the smallest ladies handbag and she just needs to slip into the office bathroom during a break to empty it into herself.
A whiff of breath freshener or a bar of chewing gum back at her desk and nobody knows what has happened.
But how did these sachet gins overthrow the competition, including the crude waragi that was supposedly cheap enough even for the unemployed to afford? It is the old game of market forces all over again.
The sachets cost far less than, a glass of crude, which was the cheapest dose for a thirsty guy.
A glass of crude costs about a dollar while for five hundred shillings (20 US cents) you get your 100ml sachet to drink alone, unlike the 300ml glass, which you share with several people in the drinking joint.
And thus the sachet has imported the mean individualistic spirit from capitalist Kenya, besides weakening our young men and women.
So next time we go to war with Kenya, they will just walk over us, as our warriors will be zonked on Beckham Gin. Since Independence, we have twice come to the brink of war with Kenya — mid 1976 and late 1987.
Next time we hear war noises at the border, we shall run, or sue for peace. The Trojan horse called neutral spirit has made many trips through Busia and Malaba, with Ugandan Customs happily collecting its due, while our warriors lie about inebriated.
A few years ago, some dealers got greedy and added some lethal stuff to the neutral spirit to make the gins mature faster.
But after a few hundred deaths, there was a crackdown and they mended their ways. Now it is a joyful, slow death for every drinker.
With a bottle of branded beer costing a dollar in the cheapest shop or bar, the gin sachets will continue being the common man’s drink, both in town and the villages.
And with a sachet in every other woman’s handbag, half the population will continue swearing by Beckham’s name.
[I]Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International fellow for development journalism. E-mail: [email protected]
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