At my age, I am not ready to die of thirst

WHEN I say that I have ambitions of running for president of this nation, people think that it is the frothy liquid in my brain which is talking, but with the current financial situation of this country, I think time is nigh.

I cannot understand how a fellow spotting a bald head and a healthy potbelly, who happens to be the father of several children and a husband of a warlike woman, can walk around with an empty wallet in the streets of Dar es Salaam.

I have all the reasons to believe that if it happened that I took over from Mama Samia and become the main prefect of this glorious nation, then things will be very much different.

I imagine children being driven to kindergarten in flashy cars, bar maids owning several prime plots, and criminals retiring in disgrace because they have no reason to steal.

I also imagine getting rid of the hassle of getting your weary body home after a drinking spree with the boys, and instead of calling out for a bajaj or uber to take you home, you just drink from the comfort of your house.

People will be drinking from their houses because I will make sure that my government enters into a handsome contract with beer companies in the country so that they can install into every household taps which produce clean, healthy beer.

I know this sounds like a pipe dream, and I have to agree with you, but the reason why my mind is running riot is because for several days now (actually almost a whole week!) my system has not tasted the frothy liquids from Ilala.

This, believe me, is not because I am a devout Muslim who is observing the holy month of Ramadan or a staunch catholic who is still remembering Quaresma, but it is simply because I am too broke to show my face in any decent bar, and the fact that the proprietor of my local watering hole in Manzese has denied me credit does not help in any way.

Mzee Zakayo, the owner and proprietor of Zakayo’s Pub in Manzese, has warned all his girls not to serve me with any kind of liquid until I cough up enough genuine money to pay for the amount of brown bottles I have swallowed on credit.

On the other hand, the mother of my small clan, mama Boyi, is making the situation worse at home, because I can see from her happy face that she is having a wonderful time watching me undergoing this torture of living with a dry throat.

“Baba Boyi, if you stop drinking for even one month, do you think that the gods of beer will be mad at you? There is plenty of water in the house, if you are too thirsty you can help yourself to as many litres as your tummy can swallow,” she said with a chuckle one day, and it is seditious talk like that which always makes the situation worse in my throat.

I called Jatello, my friend from the lake zone, who always comes in handy in situations like this and the fellow swore upon his mother’s skirt that there is someone in uswahilini who has gone to a powerful witchdoctor to ensure that money does not pass his way.

“Omera, it is exactly seven years to this day since I was as broke as I am right now, and I cannot believe that it is a natural calamity or coincidence. I strongly suspect that old man who moved into the next house last week, he is not a good person!” he said.

He however told me that if my throat was in critical condition, I should go over to his place because one of his cousins from America brought him a bottle of cognac a few days ago.

I happily surrendered myself to the fellow, and we literally did justice to the bottle, and I can assure you the Americans can really brew lethal stuff, because after we swallowed the whole bottle, Jatello told me that we should go to a neighbouring bar where they were playing live music.

He told me that in his pocket he had only 5,000/-, but assured me that it was enough for several tots to irrigate our throats for several hours.

When we reached the bar, we found the music was lively, and when Jatello approached the band manager and requested for a song, I was right behind him, and when he told him that we want to sing the song, the liquid in my head gave me full support.

The first song was ‘Karubandika’, and we belted the tune as if we were the original composers of the song, and the shouts from the patrons for us to repeat the song assured us of frothy liquids from then onwards, because eager hands were giving us money left right and centre.

They say that alcohol can make you become anyone you want to be, and in our case it made us believe that we were veteran musicians, and by the time we belted the tunes of ‘ukimuona mtu mzima akilia….’ by Msondo Ngoma, we actually shed a few genuine tears.

By the time I staggered home in the wee hours of morning, my throat was hoarse from singing, and I remember singing a song by Whitney Huston which completed the damage.

However, a few hours later, it was mama Boyi who unceremoniously woke me up after she found enough pieces of paper scribbled with telephone numbers with female names on them in my pocket.

I can still feel the impact of the frying pan on my bald head after she found traces of lipstick on my shirt!