MEN'S CORNER : He’s scraggy but drinks very expensive brand

You’ve known this man for quite some time. During last year’s General Election, you saw him numerous times, addressing small crowds of idlers, delivering lots of blah-blah on what he claimed were the policies of “his” party and candidates, while rubbishing the rest.

He was particularly harsh towards a candidate many believed would be Bongo’s next Prezo. “He’s wasting his time… we’ll show him; our party is unbeatable,” he would say.

That he was campaigning for the party and candidate of his choice, as far as you’re concerned, wasn’t the issue.

What intrigued you each time you saw him during his campaign trail is: he’d be carrying at least three, opened bottles of Heineken, the most impressive and expensive lager in Bongo. When a man is seen taking Heineken, fellow drinkers around him understand he’s not just another boozer. In any case, it carries only 330mils against the regular 500mils varieties, yet it costs Sh3,000 against Sh2,300 charged for most other brands.

There’re times a member of his audience would ask him: “Hey, bro, you drink very expensive beer, where do you get the money?”

“You’re asking a question whose answer is obvious,” he’d say.

“Obvious? What do you mean?”

“You all know we’ve the money, my party is rich.”

Some people believed him and concluded the fellow was being financed to buy expensive beer so that he’d go around wooing voters to back the party. It was like he was saying: “See, people? Vote for my party which can afford to buy me expensive beer and when we win, you all will be able to enjoy expensive things like me.”

You had your doubts if indeed there was a party that would give an activist to go around drunk, beer bottles in hand, eti, to win an election! All the same, there we were. This fellow would always be seen moving up and down addressing idlers at their vijiwe. He has money for sure, you would tell yourself, much as his clothes and personality don’t reflect the class that goes with persons who drink imported beer. The question in your mind was: “Why can’t this activist spare a bit of the money sourced from his rich party and buy himself, at least, decent mitumba.”

Since you also dress in mitumba, you know for sure that with Sh2,000 a man can buy himself clothes that go beyond covering his nakedness. A man will look great in mitumba things costing a mere Sh4,000 and few would detect he’s dressed in clothes discarded by others in Majuu. That’s less than the price of two Heinekens!

Anyway, this is a free country where some among us who consider buying smart clothes (whether mitumba or brand new) a waste of money. We drinkers are well known for that. That must be the case with this political party activist.

Well, the General Election came and went, then today you see the activist seated at a corner of this grocery.

On his table, there’re two Heineken bottles, both of which are open. A few minutes earlier, you had seen him checking empty crates at the grocery’s backyard, where drinkers pass on their way to the toilets. You had concluded he works here.

Now that he’s seated and having a beer, you believed he’s taking a well-deserved break. But then, you wonder: how does a grocery handyman afford the most expensive beer around? Elections are over and forgotten, complete with a ban on political rallies, so who is financing his expensive drinking?

You’ve been here for a while and you’ve made friends with one of the barmaids (call her Linah). You don’t want your curiosity to kill you, so you ask her to bend towards you. She does, and you ask her:

“How come your fellow employee, and who looks rather scraggy, has the money to drink Heineken?”

“Who is drinking Heineken?”

“That fellow there,” you say, pointing to your subject of curiosity.

Linah laughs and says: “What the guy is drinking is not Heineken, and he doesn’t work here.”

“But … look at the two bottles on his table.”

“Ha! Ha! Ha! That’s not Heineken; what he always drinks is flat beer, and remnants left by customers, it doesn’t matter what type, which he collects from bottles in the crates at the backyard and fills into Heineken bottles.”

“Okay, okay, okay…” That’s all you can say before you ask her to get you another small Serengeti.

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