Cheap liquor in sachets, expensive consequences

At 40 years, you could mistake James Massawe for a 65-year-old man, due to his worn out face and a slight limp on his left leg.

Massawe still sports a big scar on his left leg, following a motorcycle accident he was involved in last year. The accident saw him break his knee and get confined to crutches for close to eight months.

One thing for sure about Mzee Massawe, as many of his fellow masons in Mbezi Juu, St Mary’s High School area call him, is that he has found pleasure in drinking huge amounts of cheap alcohol sold in sachets. This is something he says he has been doing for the last ten years. One sachet of liquor, he says energises him, and motivates him to work for longer hours.

“This is like an antidote to me when I’m doing my work, the heavy load becomes much lighter after a sip,” he tells Sound Living.

But this is something his fellow masons are not happy about, as whenever Mzee Massawe goes on a drinking spree, the father of three returns home a mad man and beats up his wife.

“You would not like to see him once he is drunk, he goes savage and provokes his wife and beats her up in front of the children,” explains Anthony Kirago, Mzee Massawe’s colleague.

Twice, Mzee Massawe has been summoned by the ten cell leader and the church council where he worships for his conduct. “I’m usually nonviolent when drunk, but I get annoyed when my wife pesters me with her questions of why I drink,” he says defensively.

Unforgettable accident

On a daily basis, he would spend close to Sh 10,000 on a single drinking spree from the sachets. One sachet of liquor costs anything between Sh 700 and Sh 1,200.

Though he says his wife has vowed to seek divorce next time he beats her, Mzee Massawe is determined not to let their bond get broken.

Nevertheless, the evening of April 6, 2013 will forever remain etched in his memory. After a long day’s work on a two-storey building, Mzee Massawe went for his favourite drink at a grocery a few metres from where he was working.

Satisfied with the number of sachets he had taken that particular night and while staggering, he hopped onto his motorbike, ready to go home.

This was to be the last time he would ride a motorbike, as on the way, he met a fellow motorist with whom he collided head on. The accident left Mzee Massawe with a broken knee and some bruises on his face.

“I must have lost control of the motorbike. In a flash of a second, I saw another motorist and before I knew it, we had collided,” recalls Mzee Massawe.

He lost consciousness and woke up the next day on a hospital bed, experiencing unbearable pain in his left knee.

According to him, some passers-by on pretext of being good Samaritans, stole his valuables while he lay unconscious.

He spent three months in hospital, and when he was discharged, doctors had bad news for him.

“They said that my leg would take time to properly heal, and that I would no longer be able to climb the ladder when building people’s homes,” he says.

No giving up

Nine months on, though he has abandoned his crutches, Mzee Massawe has yet to give up on drinking. Though he now sports a limp, Massawe says it is not the right time to call it quits.

Since Massawe no longer works, his wife who runs a small food joint in their neighbourhood has now become the family’s sole bread winner.

“It hurts to see that he has not changed, I’m now responsible for paying our children’s school fees,” says Fatma Massawe, fondly referred to as Mama Joel. Mzee Massawe can now only watch in envy as his former colleagues go about with their daily construction work. It has even become tough for him to get money to buy his favourite drink at the local joint.

Cheap liquor sold from sachets has recently become the subject of public outcry with some members of the public and the government condemning its consumption. The drinks are said to be the reason behind the upsurge in crimes and accidents in the country.

Recently, the traffic unit of the police force in the country attributed the rise in motorcyclists’ accidents to the consumption of the cheap liquor from sachets by the youth.

In the Southern Region of Mbeya for instance, the consumption of liquor sold from sachets had become so common among the youth, compelling the regions’ boss, Mr Abbas Kandoro to ban the importation of such liquor sachets from Malawi and Zambia, saying the products have not been authorised for consumption by the Tanzania Food and Drugs Authority (TFDA).

According to the RC, the liquor, which probably does not meet the required standards, has bad health effects on consumers.

TFDA senior official Rodney Alananga warned traders who were defying the ban, saying legal action would be taken against those who would be found importing and selling the prohibited liquor.

In the country, such drinks are also produced and distilled by Tanzania Distilleries Limited, through their flagship of Konyagi.

A slave to the sachets

Mr Yusuph Mtela, a carpenter based in Tandika Maguruwe had once bore the brunt of excessive consumption of such liquor which saw him suspend his work to attend hospital for treatment.

“I was a good drinker of such drinks before slowly experiencing abdominal pains that come as a result of taking the sachets,” says Mr Mtela who has since quit drinking. Mr Mtela recounts the days when he would not leave behind money to buy food for the family, much to the anger of his wife.

“I became enslaved to the sachets and this affected my reasoning let alone my health. I regret the life I lived,” says the soft spoken Mtela.

Though his daily earnings would see him pocket between Sh 10,000 and 12,000, he spent a great deal of the money in buying the sachets for himself and his friends, oblivious of the state he left his family of three in.

He says there were days when he would engage in physical brawls with his wife once he returned from drinking. He never ate when drunk.

“I suspect the abdominal pains were caused by lack of eating and the doctors warned me that I was putting my life in danger,” he says.

Ever since he quit, Mr Mtela is back to his business at his modest workshop in Tandika Maguruwe, and is determined to be a good ambassador to his fellow carpenters who still wallow in such alcoholism. While Mr Mtela and Mzee Massawe are lucky to be alive today, 26-year old Andrew who was popularly known as Kabaisa in his Sinza Makaburini neighbourhood was not so lucky. He succumbed to an alcohol-related illness just a few days after Christmas last year and was laid to rest on 31 December, 2013. The young man who was a darling to many in the neighbourhood used to drink viroba (sachets) and some cheap banana booze a lot and would rarely eat.

He had been warned by concerned neighbours and doctors over his drinking habit. But like they say, the falcon does not hear the falconer, and so the warnings only fell on deaf ears.

Andrew lay in a coma in his hospital bed for over a month before he was pronounced dead.