Out in a den with a busaa drinker

Steve Nagasaki, 38, worshipped his daily chang’aa drink for some six years until he retired to what he refers to as a milder option, busaa.

At Vihiga Busaa Club in Nairobi’s Shauri Moyo estate on Thursday morning, Nagasaki held onto his favourite busaa mug as he discussed the recent chang’aa-related deaths in Kibera with his drinking mates.

He accused the owners of the drinking dens of being driven by greed and adding chemicals into the chang’aa to speed up fermentation. “In the six years that I drank chang’aa, I guess I must have been very lucky,” he says.

Nagasaki started drinking chang’aa after he lost his job in 2002 and could no longer afford beer.

Switched to busaa

“I drank chang’aa from 2002 to keep depression at bay, but I switched to busaa in 2008,” he adds. By that time, he had lost some friends to chang’aa deaths. “I also stopped drinking for fear of arrest,” he says.

By Thursday, 23 had died while nine others were in city hospitals from the weekend drink in Kibera. However, Nagasaki, a divorced father of three, warns that chang’aa, especially that brewed in towns and cities, hurts the drinkers’ health.

“Unalewa haraka kisha unakosa appetite,” (One gets drunk faster and lacks appetite) Nagasaki who works as a casual labourer in Shauri Moyo says. He acknowledges that chang’aa is the reason many women complain that the men have become unproductive and cannot sire children.

Kibera in Nairobi was one of his favourite drinking dens. However, Nagasaki is quick to point out that lack of standardisation of locals brews will lead to an increase of such incidents in days to come.

He says the struggles that face a part of the population that earn less than Sh80 a day are severe, with the harsh economic times leaving many with little choice. “We drink chang’aa because it is cheap and readily available,” he said as he sipped his mug of busaa.

Though he is not about to quit drinking, he advises those who can to keep away from alcohol. However, even his present choice of busaa, he says comes with its side-effects, though not as devastating. “Busaa is more expensive than chang’aa, thus sometimes it is not affordable,” he adds.

He singles out a particular incident in Kayole a few years ago when he used to drink chang’aa, which left an indelible mark in his life. “I had been drinking at this place for over three years, then I decided to visit relatives upcountry. When I arrived, I received news that five people had died two days after I had left,” he says.

“The drink had been ‘doctored’”, Nagasaki says as he ponders on the probable cause of death of his drinking mates. To date, he has not returned to the fateful watering hole. He fondly describes busaa as “a fairly mild, but nutritious drink”, adding that the ingredients used to make it — maize flour, wheat and sugar — are hardly known to cause harm.

On an average day, Nagasaki takes at least two mugs of busaa at Sh10 each before he sets off to look for a job for the day. “Sometimes I come here twice a day to relax my mind,” he adds. The Mutindwa Twin Pubs where five people are alleged to have consumed a drink known as Steam engine a fortnight ago, was closed and the signboard removed.