You’re clearing 2023; say, thank you Lord!

Year 2023 is coming to an end and you’re still around. You need to celebrate the fact that you survived 12 months, a period during which several persons you knew: friends, colleagues, neighbours and drinking buddies departed to the netherworld—just like that!

During the year, I personally experienced numerous near-fatal situations, like being narrowly missed by some speeding motorist at zebra crossings, which I foolishly believe are safe zones for pedestrians, kumbe wapi! Or, while taking a walk or jogging on paved pedestrian paths, which, this being Bongo, our bodaboda riders believe they own them too, the way they own the roads!

I seriously believe I hugely owe my continued survival to sticking to my vow that, after nightfall, I’ll avoid drinking at joints from where I’ll have to cross some main road to reach home. Ni hatari!

The just-ending year has seen our drinking budgets messed up by increases in the price of alcoholic beverages such as my favourites Castro Laiti, Sere Laiti and the Kasichana.

You see, we drinkers had, for over a long period, enjoyed the situation in which, with only 5K, you’d have your three Sere Laiti or Castro Laiti—plus change. And that, with 5K, you’d have your Kasichana at 4K plus a bottle of “mineral” water to go with the gin. That ended by mid-year or thereabout.

However, life had to go on…a man must drink, no matter what! With a few adjustments here and there, you’ve managed to be available at Family and Forest as regularly as you’ve always been.

Furthermore, I managed to eat Xmas like everybody else in town, having cancelled plans to travel to the hillsides of Mt Kamwala for the customary year-end reunion celebrations. I got stuck in this unbearably hot city due to circumstances that were beyond me. But then, I made sure all the brats who are answerable to me travelled to our ancestral village to link up with members of our extended family. Meet their grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles and cousins…In a word, reconnect. Introduce new wives, new husbands and new children. And new cars…ahem!

Reports that reached me at the time of filing this article had it that everything went well. Guest houses and lodges in our linear shopping centre were fully booked. Operators of Mhako, Kwa Anna, Kwa Temu and Kwa Sammy drinking outfits made a killing.

It’s well known that some people who play teetotalers while in town become drinkers when on holiday in the hills. Mwanamme ni kunywa, eh?

It’s quite clear that a few fellows don’t drink because they’re aware they don’t have to drink all the time like Uncle Kich, Esaya and Wa Muyanza. They keep their thirst under control till Xmas and New Year.

POSTSCRIPT

Let me wish you, dear reader, a happy and prosperous 2024. Continue drinking, if need be, but for goodness sake, do it responsibly—perhaps, more responsibly than you did during the just-ending year, and God bless you—WA MUYANZA

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