How I narrowly escaped lynching in Dar’s Kingugi

Hussein the Uswaz wag and I have been sweeping the Uswaz joints including Mama Mwakilambo’s where she sells lethal drinks capable of knocking down an elephant and Mzee Shirima’s where I drink on credit. The wave of migration has come about because, Hussein, being a dalali has managed to broker two huge sales of a house and a plot. This means that he is very liquid -- his wallet has been singing all the way to the bank.

Since I am the one who has been paying to keep his throat irrigated in the past, he lately became very generous with beer – he keeps my throat well irrigated. Indeed, my one and only Bisho Ntongo feels that Hussein should be hanged at the National Stadium for dragging me for bar crawling (shifting from one bar to another). I sometimes knock at her door in the wee hours of the morning but that is a story for another day.

Money, especially if it lands in hands of someone not accustomed to it is like a grenade or bomb. They are apt to do the most asinine things out there. This fad of bar crawling has seen us in the most far-flung places such as Kimbiji, Kibiti, Mkuranga, Majohe, Saadani and lately Kingugi. The urge to show up in Kingugi came up because Hussein has a “small” house (he retains a harem of women in all these places).

Kingugi retains all the trappings of Uswaz. You will be sure to see women showing off their bums, gyrating, all of them brandishing basins and other baby things on their way to “see” a new born. You will also be treated to dust-raising shaking of their legs to music, drums and trumpets oblivious of the heat, sweating like pigs.

To get to Kingugi, you board daladalas which ought to have been sold off to scrap metal dealers long ago but are nonetheless operational. I would be very happy if the traffic commandant took a ride in those junks to see for himself. We arrived at about three in the afternoon and landed at a small joint. Beers came fast and furious. I have learnt that when a man like Hussein has a woman around him, all one needs to do is parrot praises and you will be covered. He will make sure that your throat is kept wet all the time.

To show off, Hussein did the unimaginable. He loaned me some fifty thousand in full view of the woman. It did not matter that Hussein portrayed me as beggar. What mattered then is that I had real msimbazis in my pocket. All did not go down well with some guys at the next table, they were not amused by the way Hussein was behaving. When missiles including bottles started flying around, I skived towards the toilets and ran as fast as my legs could carry me.