Destroy the bottle top or else you’re finished!

You’re having a drink with two guys. As you partake of your little Serengeti, one of them is having Konyagi while the other is taking K Vant delivered in the 200m bottle. These guys are serious drinkers, you conclude.

Why, your style and that of most gin drinkers you know, is that of pouring into the glass little amounts at a time; but these guys aren’t doing that. They pour everything into the glass, and the amount of water they add to soften the poison is just ceremonial—very little.

Well, people’s drinking style is an issue that’s neither here nor there, so let’s leave it aside. The issue here is, you fail to understand when the K Vant guy discards his bottle to the trash bin nearby, minus its cap. “Why didn’t you throw away the bottle with its cap intact—somebody could make good use of it in due course, but that can’t be when the cap isn’t there,” you say.

The guy (call him Joe) looks at you, his eyes clearly showing he’s surprised by what you’ve said. “Aisee, we don’t do that… it’s dangerous!” he says as he destroys the cap using his fingers, after which he casts away.

Dangerous? Well, he might be having a point. He’s most likely worried a used bottle collector would sell it to someone who would refill it with fake gin, you opine silently. Crooked entrepreneurs do that. Nodding in agreement with him, you say, “You’re right; we shouldn’t make it possible for crooks to misuse discarded bottles.”

“You don’t understand; that’s not why we destroy the tops,” Joe says with a tone that shows he’s baffled by your reaction. He therefore explains:

“You see, Mzee Muya, if you dispose the bottle together with its top, someone could refill it with something else… that would harm the person who drank its original contents!”

The other guy, who has no need to destroy his bottle top since the Konyagi makers have made that unnecessary as the top gets destroyed as you open it, nods in agreement. You ask them to explain further. The K Vant guy says: “When someone refills your bottle with anything, even water, it upsets your stomach, wherever you might be.”

“Duh!” that’s all you say. This is spiritual. Outright superstition. You’ve lived in Bongo long enough to know you cannot reason with anyone who seriously believes in the supernatural, in things that cannot stand the test of scientific verification.

And strangely, many otherwise educated people are into it too. That’s why self-declared prophets are taking advantage of that to win followers to whom they impress on the need to get divine intervention, via their hands of course, to get rid of bad omen, defeat mapepo, reincarnate misukule, wachawi, reclaim “stolen stars” and be rich and all such other crap.

That’s why you understand your drinking mates peculiar standpoint, even as we proclaim that we too are citizens of the 21st Century world of science and technology.