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Devil’s drink plays havoc with village youth
The chang’aa brewed and consumed in the village is not the ordinary kind. Rather, it is brewed to play havoc the consumers. And the concerned brewers have spectacularly attained their goal: the brew has left many morally and psychologically decayed in the village. The first and lastborn males in families are the main culprits of the after-effects of the illicit consumption. Literally, they lose their minds after wetting their throats and burning their livers with the brew.
Loud screaming and howling like trapped animals is their way of announcing their drunken status whenever they get back home at the small hours of the night to awaken their parents with all sorts of dirty language, all the while bragging of their importance which only exists in fantasy. Two months ago, a young man arrived home filthy drunk and viciously attacked his elder brother nearly chopping off his arm at the shoulder with an axe just because he wanted to be allowed to do what he deemed right.
Maina, a 30-something-year-old and father of three from his 12-year marriage to ‘Nyasuguta’, had arrived home on the fateful day swearing to kill somebody in the family if they would not agree to his marriage to Flora, a mother of one. She is the daughter of their immediate neighbour across the stream. Maina’s family was adamantly opposed to the union but Flora’s mother, a chang’aa dealer, had sworn she would do everything to ensure the two got married.
That was the beginning of a fiasco that set off a chain of unfortunate events. Maina had spent the better part of the day at Flora’s home burning his liver and poisoning his mind with free chang’aa, courtesy of his ‘mother-in-law’. The first casualty when Maina arrived home was his brother, Onchera who was badly injured and hospitalised. Then there was their poor old mother, who collapsed on seeing blood gush out of her son’s almost severed shoulder.
At Kisii General Hospital, the elderly woman who suffered from high blood pressure and cancer of the intestines was diagnosed with a stroke and taken to the ICU where she remained in a coma for four days before she succumbed to death. Meanwhile, her son was treated in a separate room and discharged after two days.
Maina was arrested and taken to Keroka Police Station before being arraigned before Kisii Law Courts where he was sentenced to five years imprisonment. Back at home, Flora’s mother managed to escape the wrath of irate villagers who had sworn to kill her on grounds that she was the cause of what transpired in the Ondieki family by bewitching Maina.
It is not clear whether these allegations are true but one thing is clear, that the chang’aa of the area is bewitched and Maina must have taken an overdose. The results couldn’t have been worse: Maiming his brother, his five years’ imprisonment and worse still, the sudden death of his mother.
If something is not done quickly about this village, its youth risks being wiped out by the HIV/Aids pandemic not to mention the madness from excess alcohol.
