Legal Changaa? Let’s drink to that!

[roughrider]

67. The Chang’aa Prohibition Act and the Liquor Licensing Act are hereby repealed. THE ALCOHOLIC DRINKS CONTROL BILL, 2009

You know, I am a rather popular guy in my village. As soon as I arrive, a group of oddballs gather to welcome me with juicy tidbits of the latest village gossip and drama; but also for me to ‘gonyo’ them. For the uninitiated, ‘gonywa’ is code for parting with cash gifts or buying them alcohol. Alcohol invariably means changaa. So it shouldn’t surprise anybody that, while I don’t touch the stuff myself, (a cold tusker malt or occasional whiskey does it for me). I have often accompanied my ‘changaa friends’ to village dens – usually somebody’s house - and over years have observed firsthand how changaa touches people lives.

You should try this. Because when you buy people ‘distilled’, you become a village hero. That night there will be praise songs about you and your heroic deeds, your wonderful oration and blameless character. Your name will reverberate across the hills. If you are lucky, you may even be coronated king; ‘omera, in ngat ma ruoth’; ‘mate, you are kingly’, they will say.

There are several families that have educated their children up to university level and built decent houses from the brewing and sale of the crystal clear but lethal fluid. Changaa has literally transformed lives, I tell you. And of course, say what you will, but Changaa is the most social drink in the World. Changaa friends are fast friends. They are tight friends and usually before the drink takes over completely, they are lucid and eloquent. I am not talking about people suffering from the disease called alcoholism, mind you. These are often honest, hardworking people who break their backs with hard labor, ploughing and weeding the whole morning and just want to relax on a little tipple later in the evening.

If you have been on a village changaa excursion, you will know that it is ‘taken’ artfully. No, no glasses for everyone. And NO, no drinking by bottle. Instead as soon as you arrive at the mgemas house, you wait to be offered seats. Once seated, you greet everyone as if you are close relatives and discuss the weather. This allows the host businesswoman to observe her customers closely and detect the prescense of spies, informers or plain-clothed policemen. Usually, the eldest or wisest or most experienced drunkard amongst you will broach the subject.

‘Wife of my brother, is there something?’

Certainly only an idiot will mention the drink by any of its common names. That is one way of leaving the shebeen thirsty! Your bothers wife will wait a while and there will be small talk on other nondescript subjects. One might comment absently on how red Min Atieno’s sorghum crop looks this year, for example.

Your brother’s wife might then say, ‘Son of the soil, I am not sure if there is anything here. You wanted for how much?’

Your spokespersons reply, ‘Daughter of kadem, give us a 'skirt' to start with’

Now, a skirt is a kind of a drinking glass which when upside down looks like a woman’s skirt, frills and all. A single skirt will be placed on the table in front of the spokesperson. A ‘treetop’ bottle full of clear, tinkling liquid will emerge mysteriously from somewhere under the banana trees, approximately sixteen and half paces to the left of Nyarkadems house. Perish the thought, it will not be kept there again anytime soon. The glass having been filled, the treetop will disappear as fast as it came.

Mr. Spokesperson will sip first, wince deeply, pause for a second and nod at Nyarkadem. ‘Eh! woman, this is good stuff!’

The 'skirt' will go round the table before 'treetop' refills it , again and again. And so the drink goes on, accompanied by increasingly animated conversation…

But, folks, I am talking about Changaa as it is imagined, concieved and distilled in Western Kenya, usually from carefully selected grain. I am not talking about the dangerous liquids, laced with formalin, industrial ethanol, dead rats, snakes and other harmful impurities. I know that because of this dangerous alcohol, the women of Thika, Kiambu, Muranga, and Nyeri are living with galssy-eyed, sexless zombies. Cyborgs!

I hope legal changaa – when it comes to that - will allow for clean and healthy fun. I hope that women in villages will be allowed to brew and sell Muratina, Kangara, Changaa and other traditional drinks in peace. To hell with the moneyed lobbyists of EABL whove denies changaa its rightful place on the table for so long.

I will drink to that!

[mzee]

RR, you forgot to talk about OFIRO, PATILA or PELELE.
If you know something about Changaa then you will know the above.

Legalizing changaa in my opinion will only lead to serious alcoholism because it’s cheap.

[roughrider]

Jul 1, 2010 17:04:50 GMT 3 mzee said:

RR, you forgot to talk about OFIRO, PATILA or PELELE.
If you know something about Changaa then you will know the above.

Legalizing changaa in my opinion will only lead to serious alcoholism because it’s cheap.

wewe Mzee wacha maneno yako. Alcoholism is caused by other things, not the cheapness or availability of drinks such as changaa.

That view is just wrong headed.

More people suffer pain and even death because of illegal changaa.

[adongo23456]

rr

I love the piece. You are a marvelous story teller. Use that talent please. We need it. Now just one thing about the chang'aa folks. In my neck of the woods they called it "achwaka".

And one thing used to just blow me to pieces when I was a kid. My mom's friend was a super distiller. She had a reputation in the village. You know the way they do ads in the village. If you are hot, word goes around and the day your pot is ready folks rush to get something before it is over.

Now folks would come in the evening. They never drink Chang'aa during the day unless you are an out and out lunatic. So the folks come. They would be so descent. Very nice even to the kids. They will be talking almost in whispers to each other and to the lady of the house. Even walking into their midst you felt you were interfering with something very humble.

Then the "treetop" bottles would flow one after the other with quick shots, slow shots, thoughtful shots and so on. And before you know it, the silence is broken. They would get louder and louder by the second and in to time they would have forgotten they were consuming an illegal substance and they would be yelling on top of their lungs and having a ball until they are thrown out. And the next day they would come back even more humble and ask if they owe anything from the previous day.

Achwaka is something else.

adongo

[roughrider]

Facts about alcoholism: It is also called alcohol dependency syndrome and characterized by the constant craving for alcohol, or inability to stop drinking. Research has shown that alcoholism is predisposed by stress, social problems, mental and psychological problems, genetics, age, ethnic group, and sex.

There is always an underlying problem in an alcoholic. if they did not abuse alcohol, they would latch on to something else.

[roughrider]

Adongo;

They call it Achwaka because the distillation process involves lots of boiling and condensation. And all this, often in the thick bush away from prying eyes. You know, some of the practitioners of Achwaka would get a Nobel prize in chemistry for innovation.

[abdulmote]

RR,

Thank you for your refreshing piece! Well written.

[okhunyanye]

rr

Your piece has the hallmark of an excellent raconteur at work. Held me spellbound till the very end.

Where I was left in suspense, though, was the role that EABL lobbyists have played in stifling the legalization of changaa. Mind delving deeper into that angle of your piece?

All said, if its benefits outweigh its costs, then I'd say Amen to legalizing it.

NB: You once mentioned that you took time to publish during your brief hiatus from Jukwaa. Would sharing links to that something that you would be open to?

[Onyango Oloo]

Roughrider:

Thanks for the thread.

Below is a link to an article I did on the subject exactly FIVE YEARS ago:

www.kutokanet.com/issues/alcohol_drugs/alcohol.pdf

[tactician]

Excellent piece roughrider!

i felt like i was there in person...even though i have never partaken the drink.


Keep writing man - you got a mighty talent there

[madgf]

RR, love it, thanks!

Onyango I didn't know you wrote a piece on chang'aa, love it!

[mank]

RR,

Tha's a beutiful story on Chang'aa. You describe some great communion of the stuff ... but I doubt the good discipline will carry forward to the bars.

Everything has its displine when reserved for the pros. In the bars, chang'aa will certainly attract misfits, and things will not be as glamorous as what you narrate.

[ebarasi]

RR

You really took me on this engaging and enjoyable trip where you let your passengers see it vividly. If there was standardization and quality control of "OUR local whisky", would you consider dumping that other stuff that made its name from being a royal supplier?

Ebarasi

[phil]

;D

Kenya’s President signs alcohol Bill
BY ANTHONY KAGIRI


NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 1 - Hopes that the government would soon regulate the skyrocketing prices of essential goods have hit a snag after President Mwai Kibaki declined to assent to the Price Control (Essential Goods) Bill.

President Kibaki sent a memorandum to Parliament, expressing his reservation with the regulations that were abolished in the 1990s. Speaker Kenneth Marende informed the House that the Head of State had rejected the Bill as it was.

“I have received a memorandum of refusal to assent to the Bill. The memorandum has to be considered by September 16, 2010,” said Mr Marende.

The Bill introduced by Mathira MP Ephraim Maina was passed by Parliament in June this year and was only waiting the Presidential assent to become law. The Bill sought the government to be obligated to issue price ceilings on essential goods whose prices keep fluctuating to cushion members of public from exploitation.

Among goods that Members of Parliament wanted the government to regulate included food items, sugar and fuel. The National Economic and Social Council has been consistent in discouraging price controls on the basis a liberalised market.

However the House can reject the memorandum by securing the 75 percent vote needed to override a Presidential veto.

Other Bills signed into law include the Indemnity Repeal Bill and Animal Technicians Bill.

”The law requires that when the President submits a memorandum, the House shall deliberate on it within 21 days,” said Mr Marende.

Traditional brew lovers however have a reason to smile after President Kibaki signed into law the Alcohol Drinks Control Bill that legalises the traditional liquor. The manufacture and packaging of these brews will however be strictly regulated.

The brews will be packed in 250 millilitre bottles or more.

“It was duly assented to by the President on August 13, 2010,” said the Speaker.

However the Bill also reigns into the high end beers market by regulating their advertising and sale. Consequently fancy adverts that glamorise alcoholic drinks, link beer to social success and therapeutic value will now be outlawed. This also brings to an end the multi million shilling promotions run by the giant brewers where people win beer and money since it “encourages the consumption of alcohol.”

Consumers will not be allowed to buy alcohol in the supermarket or corner shops. The Bill also outlaws the sale of alcohol to uniformed police officers and the sale of the same on credit basis. Bars will also be required to display large health warnings in strategic positions in their premises.

The legislation also requires labelling of the product, including health warning and product contents. Beer manufacturers will be required to ensure that the health warning occupies at least a third of the beer bottle.

The law takes effect after 90 days and the Minister for Internal Security and Provincial Administration will be required to gazette new rules that will govern the new bill.
The new law comes into force, at the backdrop of reported deaths resulting to the consumption of illicit brews.
Other bills that have also been assented by the Head of State include the Commissions of Inquiry Amendment Bill, the Prevention of Organised Crime Bill.

It was sponsored by Naivasha MP John Mututho, and seeks to regulate every aspect of the alcohol business. Anyone going against the provisions would be committing an offence and would be liable upon conviction of a fine not exceeding Sh500,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years or both.

[mank]

I wonder what motvated the government to legalize traditional brews. ... and by that, I mean commercial traditional brews. What's there to gain by this?

[hubert]

RR

That's my stuff and I love it dearly. We can now Support local economy and bring joy to the many families living under financial oppression. Thanks for the beautiful narration.

[mank]

Last time they were legal all the neighbourhoods I knew, including mine, were a mess. Life revolved around chang'aa and other local brews. People dressed poorly and ate poorly. Little pubs (cum brothels) flourished all over, with links with homes which were the mini breweries. Ugly fights, road accidents, strange murders and spontaneous deaths were common. Domestic voilence was common.

I have nothing against local brews. In fact I would not like a world without them. It is the commerce, the economy and the life they inspire that I do not look forward to. Local brews have always been with us; their presence from 1979 to now, was a healthy presence. No one came to your home to say you cannot take your delights, but you also had to be very careful not to provoke the law. What this recent change means to me, is that we go back to the style of 1978. There is nothing there to covet.

[adongo23456]

Good friends,

A few things. First the new alcohol legislation does not mean your neighbour, friend or family member will just brew some chang'aa next door and sell it. That is still illegal. You have to bottle the stuff and declare the alcohol content on the bottle. Now you tell me, does the local brewer of chang'aa or the deadly kumi kumi know the alcohol content of what they sell? No, they don't. Can they bottle it? No they can't. So they are out of the industry and still illegal.

Second. So who is going to brew this thing? The big corporations. That is who is going to make big money. I would not be surprised if the Kenya Breweries opens up a distillery for a brand of Kenyan Chang'aa. I don't know what the brand name will be, but rest assured that aunt jemima will not be selling any legal chang'aa any time soon.

Third, licensing in alcohol production is very complex business. Many brands in rum for example, are all taken. Chang'aa is a form of gin. Companies in Kenya are now legally allowed to produce, package and sell that kind of gin locally and across the borders. That is a good thing. All that matters is the quality of the gin. But we have to tell auntie jemima that she cannot sell her homemade gin across the street. Of course the death merchants selling kumi kumi from some backside kiosks is still doing illegal business and should be arrested and prosecuted.

Fourth. Let me say this. The distillery of chang'aa is very complex. I wish they could tap into the talent of chang'aa distillers. My mom was one of them. Yesterday me and the girls (her daughters and best friends to me) were laughing about it on the phone. That is after they called me to announce to me that under the new constitution the huge track of land that I inherited from our parents is no longer my property and has to be shared equally with them. I was the only boy in a family of six. That came with a lot of privileges. I should have known this new katiba thing was bad. But we had a good laugh.

Back to the distillery. That thing is tough. It comes from corn and other such products. It is a strict science. You create yeast from corn and other such products. Turn them into tons of liquid stuff, then distill them into colourless alcohol and determine the content.

In the villages they measure the alcohol content by spilling it on the rocks and lighting fire on them. If the fire comes up, that is deadly stuff. You have to take that with caution. That is not what the new law allows.

adongo

[Horth]

Adongo,

Doesn't matter what the new law allows. The illegal distillation will continue until such time as the common folk are able to afford the more expensively bottled and legalized Changaa.

Even then, look at the worldwide problem with Moonshine, which is even found in the US, despite their laws against it. It's a worldwide problem mainly attributed to poverty / low incomes and no law will be able to solve it.

P.S. I like the story of your land. I also had a good laugh until I remembered my inherited shamba and my sisters. We gain some and we loose some, right?

[mank]

Adongo,

I agree with your interpretation of the law, and what it means to legalizing auntie Jemima's kitchen brewery versus big corporations. The only reason incorporated breweries may hesitate to open chang'aa subsidiaries is that they might see this law as short-lived.

But if you are arguing that this law does not encourage illegal breweries, then you are not being realistic. Did you see how and by whom the passage of the law was celebrated? It was the kumi-kumi breweries that had the shining star.

The law will have to visit auntie Jemima severally and perhaps book her severally before she realizes that the law is not meant to liberate her kitchen brewery. The law could have been clear about this, spelling out where chang'aa can be legally brewed rather than burying anti-aunt Jemima's little brewery in little technicalities like the bottling and labeling. But me thinks this strategy is not a mistake - it is actually designed to give auntie Jemima a legal avenue into the business.

Auntie Jemima can curve out a chang'aa distillery space off her kitchen, and then transport her product to a central collections port where an entrepreneur will be standardizing the product, bottling it up before whole-selling it to distributors. A pretty good model actually. So I think the government this time should work on the side of educating auntie Jemima into tapping on this law instead of setting her aside as a misfit in the industry. She should be taught that she will make herself a misfit if she chooses to still make unwelcome sales to the final consumer when she cannot standardize the product.

But really, determining the alcohol content of chang'aa is not a very complicated process. It just has not been done at home, but it is not a unique challenge. The law which expects home brewers to be cut out by this standard can be surprised to find an entrepreneur selling rather unsophisticated gadgets that can get auntie Jemima legally backed up. With a measuring gadget, auntie Jemima can custom-fit her paraphernalia to produce chang'aa that is within guided alcohol concentrations - and she won't even need to measure again, except if something changes in her set-up ... for example if the the equipment blows up and she (hoping she is not too close during the blow-up) has to set it up anew.

[job]

I would caution aunt Jemima not to celebrate yet. One step forward may bring unforseen misery. How will merely legalizing chang'aa ensure it's production and marketing is retained by aunt Jemima?

As Oloo suggested earlier, unless aunt Jemima and peers form chang'aa cooperatives or distilling societies, she will quickly be driven out of business by KBL and other big corporations whose oligarchy reign the economy-of-scale domain.

[commes]

Jul 2, 2010 9:39:46 GMT 3 Onyango Oloo said:

Roughrider:

Thanks for the thread.

Below is a link to an article I did on the subject exactly FIVE YEARS ago:

www.kutokanet.com/issues/alcohol_drugs/alcohol.pdf

OO, so when is RR back tothe fold?


Killer brew not unique to Kenya. Ecuadorean has been stunned too!

www.economist.com/node/21530153?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/youtryitfirst

Double double toil and trouble

ON JULY 11th several people arrived at a hospital in western Ecuador with symptoms of alcohol poisoning. Eight of them died. The incident could conceivably have been caused by binge drinking. But within days the death toll soared and spread. The government declared a state of emergency and banned alcohol sales for three days, antagonising bars and much of the public.
Suspicion fell at first on unregulated moonshine, made on sugar-cane farms in the western lowlands and Andean valleys. But as the number of those sickened, blinded and killed rose, authorities found that many victims had consumed drinks from a factory near the city of Guayaquil. It made fruity “wines” out of ethanol and flavourings, packaging them in plastic bags inside cartons. The manufacturers were adding methanol, a toxic industrial alcohol, to the mix.

Officials promptly closed the factory, banned its brands and arrested its owner, Edgar Santana. But 500,000 litres of its deadly brew, which has so far poisoned 771 people and killed 51, had already been distributed. Although the government launched a $450,000 buy-back campaign, only a third of the outstanding cartons have been returned. The rest could yet kill 1,000 people.

The deaths have stunned the Ecuadorean public. But students of the country’s product-safety procedures say the only surprise is that such a tragedy didn’t happen sooner. Much of the regulatory agency’s experienced staff was replaced when Rafael Correa became president in 2007. Before this year, the government required only a sample to issue a licence to sell food or medicine, rather than testing products in the marketplace. Imported methanol is widely available and unregulated. Mr Correa himself admitted last month that Ecuador’s sanitary regulations were substandard.

Some precautions should be easy to implement, like requiring methanol to be sold coloured and scented so that it can be easily recognised. Identifying which other products pose health risks in Ecuador will be far harder.

[subsaharanite]

One thing that is confusing is what is really killing the people. As you can see, all the deaths have been happening in central, Nairobi and section of eastern provinces and the drinks causing this havoc are bottled. From the nature of their deaths, you can tell that the major culprit is methanol whose physical characteristics are similar and often indistinguishable from ethanol - the good stuff. So someone is obviously either deliberately selling methanol to blenders or passing it out as ethanol . In most cases, both methanol and ethanol are byproducts from the sugar industries, notably Mumias, but ethanol has a ready market to clients like KWAL who further refine it and blend it to make various hard liqueurs.

Methanol on the other hand is cheaper as it has a limited market and unscrupulous dealers often obtain and sell it to those gutter bottlers who do not even test it before blending. These guys are so greedy that they do not even want to invest in simple detectors that can check out what raw materials they produce. They are blaming bar owners yet I'm pretty sure they know who owns the factory that bottles these drinks. They claim that alcohol is supposed to be bottled in glass bottles, yet those plastic bottles are particularly produced for particular brands of beverages by well known bottle blowers. We only have a bunch of plastic bottle manufacturers and they are well known. How comes nobody has arrested them or asked them to stop the manufacture of these bottles?

We have already seen the government purportedly arresting lorry drivers with different chemicals en-route to Kenya from Tanzania. Lets not be cheated; Tanzania is not the main source of methanol, Its our sugar industries. When I saw those TV clips whereby it was claimed that 40000 liters of methanol had been impounded on transit, I was disgusted by the lies they were peddling. For those of you familiar with the chang'aa manufacture can tell you that it was mere beer that had not been distilled to yield ethanol and maybe some methanol.

I bet what I am trying to say is that the real culprits are the sugar industries. They are the ones who sell methanol to unscrupulous dealers. Its not the Tanzanians. If indeed it was Tanzanians, then there should have been similar deaths down there and from what I know, Tanzanian government is more strict than Kenya's. We already have problems with Ugandans over Migingo, Al Shabab is causing chaos to our east while the Merille are busy slaughtering our people and increasing tension between us and Ethiopia to our north. We already have too much tension with our neighbors. Only Tanzania and South Sudan still remain. Lets not create tension with the Tanzanians over methanol which we know is produced here in Kenya.

Notably, we have not had similar death incidents from chang'aa brewing regions like Nyanza, Western and parts of the Rift Valley because these brewers know their recipes and use genuine raw materials in their processes. These people have been drinking chang'aa for a long time but you will never hear their women complaining of low libido unlike their central and eastern province counterparts. In fact, they're known for their high sexual octane. I suspect these people in central and eastern regions drink something other than mere ethanol. Its time we realized that impunity is killing us.

[einstein]

Homabay police crackdown on illicit brew

[marikopolitico]

Prohibition failed spectacularly over 90 years ago in the United States and created a new breed and legendary criminal which up-to today, law enforcement agencies still grapple with like a mighty leviathan.
Or perhaps Kenya needs an Al Capone figure to rise so as to realise what an utter failure the 'Mututho Laws' have been?