“SACHET LIQUOR FOR PROSPERITY”
It’s a new trend all over Uganda’s major towns; young people are taking to it like it’s a national activity, best befitting to be locally code named the ‘Bonna Banywe’ scheme’ meaning ‘let them all drink,’ an ideal life-style of sorts. This time though, unlike the “slow progress” of all becoming ‘prosperous,’ this new wave of liquor prosperity is highly addictive, not like Desire’s ‘Kitone saga’ or Dr. Kazibwe’s brain buster of spending 3billion to get a job, when she could start hundreds with half that bill. Its sachet liquor, the new found adorable love of Uganda’s promising and passing generations.
This liquor is the latest among tongue and brain thrillers about town, a hot anima, it’s tantalizing, exquisite and blends quit well with slow hitting beers. More focus on the youth though, sachet liquor for being as cheap as 500Ug Shs, portable and everywhere-well except in places where paper knows no whisky, poises it a most convincing way to get votes, if at all you are bidding for any youth mandate one of these days. For some youth, it’s now a new form of employment, carried on and about all day and all night.
A most common ‘resource’ in local stalls than even water, an elusive turn to many of Kampala’s rural bangers ushers you to the ‘ministry’ of uncouth spirits, whose name branding alone, is enough to make you get into high spirits. From thinking in tongues under the influence of ‘coffee-spirit,’ to ‘Bond-seven’ or ‘Liberty’ like no other liquor to the clutches of ‘Royal’ not forgetting a name like none, ‘Kill me quick, ’ the funny names are endless. Sachet liquor at least, (literally) is the miracle of this century for today’s youth here.
Packaged in 100ml pocket friendly sized packs, a majority of these spirits have a high alcohol content percentage that has rendered some husbands wag and stale in full filling their marriage duties. The popularity of sachet liquor knows no bounds as it has equally found its way to the so called ‘gallant intellectuals’ of this pearl. Perhaps it could be for this reason that some graduates have failed to know their abilities in creativity.
A former student of one of Uganda’s high notch universities only revealed as Andrew confessed that he witnessed for three years as his classmates ventured into lectures escorted with sachets. This tendency he envisaged was the reason some of the students were overly vocal and active during lectures, even when everything they said was a lot of nonsense.
“We had guys who would come into class when they were already high and smelt like a liquor factory.” He said
For firsthand experience on this liquor prosperity, I visited rural parts of Kinawataka including its urban parts to ascertain the grossness of this new ‘prosperity.’
As early as 6am when many of the residents of Kinawataka, majority of whom are employed in Kampala’s industrial area in the heart of the city wake to start a new day, the far-off echoes of barking dogs and a cold soothing morning air reveal the jovial dances and soft cries of lovers and revelers alike, sachet in hand-while another hand dances about in search of the softest bearing of a half naked women, young and middle aged, who in earnest tease the young drunken men about with their eye-gluing thighs in skimpy dances as the infamously banned ‘Embooko’ song by the late singer Master Blaster(RIP) plays in the background.
Emmanuel one of the revelers at the bar says sachet liquor has become a part of his body system. “It is like a virus, it spreads and bonds with the body system, it has now become a part of me; I want to stop drinking, but not if it mean me losing part of me.” He marveled out
Just about them are countable empty packs of sachet liquor, some looking over-sucked, while others tremble from the chewy bites of those unable to get an extra pack. Just then, as it clocks 6:30am, a young man seemingly in his mid twenties, crosses to a shop near the bar, buys two packs, slides them down his pants and briskly walks off to the rail track towards the city center. As the sun ‘peeps-out,’ the liquor prosperous drift off like pilgrims from a far off land, with escorts of sachets in-hand and in pocket, to keep them ‘alive’ until they return to their ‘prosperity.’
UG-SATIRE.COM 