You’ve finished your first beer and are waiting for a second… and maybe a third. You had a rough day doing several things a hustler must do, besides torturing your fingers on the computer keyboard to produce crap like this one you’re reading.
A few beers go a long way to soothe not just a man’s dry throat but his whole system as well. We call that decongesting.
At least ten minutes have elapsed since you polished off the 330ml bottle you’ve been imbibing slowly, kupiga tarumbeta style.
Those who’ve followed you in this space over the years know why you prefer kupiga tarumbeta, loathed as it is by some of your more sophisticated buddies.
Your ndugu, Esaya, is one. But Uncle Kich and you ignore him.
First, it’s safe and clean. One doesn’t have to worry about the often poorly cleaned glasses. Second, it’s easy to control your speed, a significant thing for economy drinkers like you.
Third, the style further puts in check the menacing wahudumu who’ve the bad habit of unilaterally picking up a drinker’s bottle, giving it a shake before pouring every remaining drop into his glass and asking, 'Unaongeza?'
There’s nothing as embarrassing as having on a man’s table a glass that’s not partnered with a bottle.
The mhudumu knows that, so after refilling a customer’s glass by force, she hangs around, asking him further, 'Huongezi?' You hate that!
But all the same, even as you drink freely in Tarumbeta style…you expect a waiter to check on you now and then and respectfully ask you if you want some more.
Ten minutes have elapsed and nobody has bothered to check on you.
The newspaper in your hands has somewhat kept you too occupied to remind yourself that you’re here, not to read, but to (mainly) drink.
The mhudumu who saved you earlier is presently at the counter, and her colleague, the key akaunta, is seated four tables away from yours, having a drink and chatting with a customer who’s probably her boyfriend.
Now as you try to signal the stand-in accountant (call her Neema) at the beer-dispensing cabin to bring you another drink, it’s hard for her to notice you, for she’s blocked by patrons she’s serving or chatting with.
When she ultimately notices you desperately hailing her, she shouts at this young girl who’s at the table next to yours, busy watching pictures on the phone she’s sharing with a young boy.
“You, Jane! Why aren’t you attending mzee… You're just there wasting time with this cowboy I’ve numerous times warned you about?”
Kumbe, all this time you’ve been seated close to an attendant who didn’t look like one at all!
Jane and the cowboy displayed a lot of excitement as they marvelled at whatever they were watching on the boy’s…or the girl’s smartphone.
You never for once saw her stand up and move around to check out if anyone needed another drink.
After Neema’s rebuke, she dashes to the counter and comes back with your order and says, 'Sorry, mzee,' as she opens the bottle for you.
She’s just 18, while the cowboy, a nephew of a neighbourhood watchman, is hardly 16.
