The socialization of Kikuyu Youth that Alcohol equals elite status:
Take your teenage son or daughter to a grave of an alcoholic. Show them a family member that has been wasted by this vice. Show them a widow, an orphan rendered destitute by this vice. Do your duty and prevent the next generation of alcoholics before it happens
Back in our days the first thing you did after getting circumcised is look for cigarettes or whatever other forbidden vice and indulge. I didn't like the smell of cigarettes but I tried. The next thing is was to make sure you saved enough coins to get into your local pub and drink beer or go the numerous Nubian Gin dens and get a glass of chang'aa or cheap spirit.
The Kenyan elites adored their British colonizers so much that after independence it was fashionable thing for professionals to drink Monday thru Friday and on weekends to binge drink like those unwashed British blue collar workers in happy valley. This tradition was adopted as part of Kikuyu culture. A young man after graduating from secondary or college would use the first salary in buying alcohol and making sure that everyone knew about.
During recession of 1990s and economic meltdown there was massive layoffs of Kenyan civil servants. As a result alcohol consumption declined and that is when Karanja wa Tabitha and some renegade Goan from Naivasha started packaging cheap lethal ethanol based spirits. These spirits were named Scud, Lumulika, green modern, and some other funny names. With these spirits available all you needed was $4 dollars to get total wasted.
There was another group of unsanitary distillers that would steal jet fuel and refine it. In my village we used to go to this one Kioski where a glass of GASHOL would cost 7 shs. If you drunk one you would really fly like a jet. I remember the last time we drank gasohol I got home and after I sobered up vowed never to touch that mess again. I couldn't understand how half a glass would mess me like that.
Anyway with the entry of these cheap spirits now alcohol and went mainstream and it became affordable to anyone at any given price range. In turn all the poor and working poor now could drink daily like their bosses and then binge on weekends. As a result we have had a lost generation of Wamunyotas. Luckily I quit alcohol before I became a ranging alcoholic.
My point is we need to put the cultural restrictions on alcohol. I say we go back in time and decide that no man or woman will consume alcohol until they are aged 25 years and over. I believe at 25 years the brain is fully developed to allow rationale decision making and avoid impulse reactions.
To parents the best way to guard against alcoholism in kids is to talk sense to them. Get it in their mind. Give them the literature on what alcohol does to a young brain. I think one of the best anti drug messaging was by parents. In my village we had one muguruki that parents would show as an example of what can happen when you smoke bangi. No one wanted to be in that man's condition. I believe we can show every kid a graves of men and women we have buried in our families due to alcohol. We can show them a widow, an orphan that is a victim of this vice.
Unedited ..edit it as you read
Topic: Tabitha Karanja and the GOAN merchants of Death in Central (Read 1841 times)