CANDID TALK : Shut up and drink, stop talking nonsense

Uswaz mouths can never stay shut. Even when there is no genuine reason for anyone to keep speaking, gravity does its best to keep them open at all times.

Put otherwise, if an Uswahilinite’s mouth is not chewing something, it will certainly be blabbering something about Simba SC, Yanga or the government. What comes out of those mouths can make one throw up. I now understand why most folks from the country of President Donald Duck, even diplomats are always chewing gum!

My drinking chum Winchinslauss Rwegoshora (PhD, MA, BA, Dip UDSM), the man said to have ‘swallowed’ more books at the hallowed university than the entire Uswaz says that if one has nothing to say in front real men, he should keep his trap shut. Winch says that real men must either have their wallets lined with real msimbazis (Tanzanian currency) in their pocket or real brains and not porridge tucked somewhere in their skulls – and that is the way we live in Uswaz. By saying this, he had in mind Hussein the Uswaz wag’s mouth recently went wild during one of our drinking binges.

My wallet that prior to that day had been suffering from financial Kwashiorkor was at the time smiling at me for I had managed to squeeze a few ‘lakis’ out of an NGO, having edited a policy paper for them. For that, Rwegoshora, Hussein the wag, Tatu the barmaid and another lassie I really don’t remember had all gathered at Mzee Shirima’s beer hole to enjoy my new found wealth - I was feeling generous.

Hussein is a loud-mouthed know-it-all kind of bloke, who assumes the chairmanship of any unofficial drinking meeting and won’t let anyone else speak. Hussein is a retired army serviceman (though he calls himself a retired officer) of dubious reputation.

He ekes out his living driving a taxi as a “deikwaka”. He is conversant with Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Kampala and all the cities on the eastern side of this continent from hear says. Having been a soldier, he boasts of a high capacity to accommodate hard clear liquor like Konyagi and Johnnie Walker. He considers Winch and I some sort of sissy creeps because we prefer to irrigate our Kalahari-like throats with frothy brands in cockroach coloured bottles from hallowed Ilala Breweries.

We had just been into our fifth drink when Hussein’s mouth went into full gear. Winch’s gave learned discourse about computer viruses that had crept into junk of a computer and anti-virus software. Winch said with a tinge of importance that computers had eaten into the computer programs.

Hussein’s mouth went gaga. He kept talking at the top of his voice as if to outdo the radio speakers blaring behind us.

He advised me to keep my daughter Jenny away from the computer and use ARVs and antibiotics on my computers. I stole a glance at Winch whose face had telltale signs of boredom. I also wanted to tell Hussein to just shut up and drink – to tell him that computer viruses are not organisms but obliterated programs that screw up other programs in the computer.