NAIROBI LETTER:While using local crops in brewing helps create jobs, the level of alcohol abuse is causing despair, writes JODY CLARKE
IT’S 6.15AM, and John Muagi has just knocked back his first drink of the day.
He starts work in 30 minutes, cutting hedges with a chainsaw, but he’s not afraid of the effect the alcohol will have on his ability to handle it.
“I wouldn’t go to work without it,” he says, calling to the bar for a refill.
“It makes me more vigorous,” he laughs, making a sawing motion with his two hands.
The village pub resembles a madhouse. A child is screaming in the corner, and one man, who the regulars call “crazy”, scrambles to steal a withering cigarette butt off the floor.
On the wall is a health promotion poster for diabetes. Looking around at the early morning regulars, heads swung low and others running hyper, it’s hard to tell if it’s a joke.
They are all drinking Muratina, an illicit home brew that tastes of unsophisticated whiskey, made from sugar and the muratina fruit. And in doing so, they are taking their lives in their own hands.
In April, 11 died and at least seven were hospitalised in a Nairobi slum called Shauri Moyo, after taking another concoction called Chang’aa or “kill me quick”. The same month, another 100 were killed in western Uganda from toxic waragi, or banana gin. The killer ingredient this time, it is thought, was methanol, which is sometimes used to give the home-made alcohol more of a kick. Other times it is stolen jet fuel and in any case, the water used is often filthy with fecal matter.
At 10 Kenyan shillings (€0.10) for half a pint, fans of home brew are willing to take the risk, though. A bottle of Guinness is 10 times that, a quarter of the daily wage for a manual labourer in Nairobi. And with an estimated 315 million Africans living on less than $1 a day – roughly the same cost as a bottle of beer – it’s no surprise that the UN’s World Health Organisation reckons that half of all alcohol drunk in Africa is illegal.
That could be about to change though.
East African Breweries, one of Kenya’s biggest companies, wants to see Chang’aa and other illicit brews replaced by safer commercial versions. South Africa’s Sab Miller, meanwhile, is busy developing its own cheaper versions of lager. They import as much as 80 per cent of their raw materials for the African market into the continent, but are looking at ways to use more locally produced sorghum and cassava, a lot of which goes unused.
“We are trying to come up with beer that costs 30-40 cents a bottle” says Jonathan Oates, a spokesman for the company. They’ve already developed a sorghum-based beer in Uganda called Eagle, which is now the country’s most popular, while they are at the final stages of making beer out of cassava.
“In Ghana, there is as much as one million tones of cassava lying unused in the ground,” says Oates. “If we could use it, we could make beer 50-60 per cent cheaper.
But the level of alcohol abuse in countries such as Kenya makes some people despair.
“I think we are seeing the beginning of a lost generation in the slums and villages – unemployed youths with no hopes who just turn to drink as an escape” says William Sinkele, a former Dominican priest who trains addiction counsellors to help alcoholics in Nairobi’s slums.
It’s led to what he calls a “triple convergence epidemic”, whereby alcohol abuse is exacerbating an increase in the number of cases of TB and HIV/Aids.
“All across sub-Saharan Africa you see it. HIV means people can’t work. And when they are unemployed they turn to alcohol.” Some governments have taken steps to mitigate the problem by raising taxes on beer.
Botswana’s teetotal president, Ian Khama, campaigned for tax on alcohol to rise to as much as 70 per cent, worried as he was about the effect of alcohol on the country’s society. He ended up settling for a 30 per cent rise, after opposition from the tourism industry and brewers, one of Africa’s strongest lobby groups.
Still, more locally sourced beer should boost employment and incomes on the continent. Sab Miller already supports 20,000 subsistence farmers, a figure it believes will rise to 45,000 when it starts making more sorghum- and cassava-based beers.
“Anything in excess is bad for you” says Kenneth Njunga, another regular at the bar. “I’ve been drinking Muratina since I was this high,” he says, lifting his hand just above the level of the table. “It hasn’t done me any harm.”
And with that, two cups full of home brew, he gathers up a plastic bag with his work clothes, and potters out the door.