Sobering tales of Sh1b project to help alcoholics ditch tipple

Chairman of Makwa Kaa Sober Programme, Benard Chege Ngugi shows where brewers used to make illicit brews at River Chania in Gatundu, Kiambu County. (Beverlyne Musili, Standard)

All his life, the 45-year-old father of four has never taken alcohol. His wife, Alice, Wangari, can attest to that.

Yet Bernard Chege is today a happy man, thanks to a multi-million shilling project to rehabilitate alcoholics.

He dashes from feeding his two calves with banana stems, housed in an incomplete two-room stone structure, his safari boot shoes caked in reddish-brown mud. He is beaming with joy.

“I bought these two calves for Sh26,000. This is the money I was paid by Governor Ferdinand Waititu’s government under the Kaa Sober programme,” he says.

He proudly displays his certificate, dated February 19, 2019, proclaiming that “he is a trained fundi, a graduate of Kairi Vocational training centre.”

His story is as intriguing as that of 71-year-old Ngang’a Nduuru, who was trained in hair dressing and therapy.

Asked whether since he graduated from Kairi he has attended to any client’s hair or offered any therapy services, the grandfather shakes his head, an emphatic no.

Laundry business

“But what did you do with the Sh20,000 you were given? “To which he responds: “I have not opened a business but I will soon.”

“I have always wanted to be a hair dresser although previously before I was bankrupted by alcohol I operated a laundry business in Land Mawe in Nairobi.”

Chege and Nduuru are members of a 15-village group who came together in February this year to form Makwa Kaa Sober Self Help group.

They are members of a larger group of 100 other residents who came together after Kiambu county started a programme of eradicating runaway alcoholism.

We have established that like Chege, there were many others who received the money yet they were not alcoholics.

For 12 months, Chege, like 5,000 other members of the programme, would report at his designated station every day at 8am.

It is estimated that for the time Kaa Sober Programme was in force, the county government forked out  close to Sh1 billion to pay out the 5,060 beneficiaries. The county spent Sh200 million per day to pay the Kaa Sober members.

The programme opened a number of battle fronts for Kiambu leaders opposed  to Governor Waititu’s style of leadership, accusing him of allegedly misusing the money.

Kiambu Deputy Governor James Nyoro has been on record claiming his boss has spent Sh1.5 billion on a project which many describe as ineffective. The governor has denied these allegations. Others claim it has changed many lives.

Makwa Chief Michael Ng’anga says his location had been losing a lot of youth either to drinks or inexplicable suicides. “We were very worried. Barely a week would end without a young person dying.

“When we started this campaign, there was a lot of skepticism but things have improved. Incidences of suicides have reduced and sale of illicit brew has drastically reduced,” Ng’anga added.

One of the beneficiaries, 67-year-old Gabriel Githuka says he wants to start farming after he invested his severance pay of Sh20,000 to dig a well.

“I was among the first people to volunteer for the programme.

I had been battling with alcoholism for over 30 years.

At the beginning we would get Sh300 per day. Another Sh100 was used to cater for our breakfast and lunch.”

Gatukuyu trading centre, which was the epicentre of violent crime and a haven of militant Mungiki adherents has in the words of Mang’u MCA Lawrence Kibachi, sobered up because most of the trouble makers were wooed into the programe.

Notorious brewers

“There were 27 notorious brewers operating down River Chania. Waititu enticed them to stop brewing by offering them jobs. They too were  being paid on daily basis. That is why we have been able to reduce the  chang’aa brewing,”  said Lawrence Kibachi.

“Besides idleness and reckless drinking of illicit brew all day long, we were plagued by suicides. We were burying at least 10 people in a week in Mangu Ward. There was a time we buried 16 people who had committed suicide,” Kibicha adds.

Some changaa brewers unhappy with the project violently accosted those trying to run them out of business.

In one instance, three men severed the neck of a relative with an axe, after he ditched chang’aa accusing him of betrayal by joining the project.

Kibachi explains that although Kaa Sober has not been 100 per cent successful, he is grateful that it has positively transformed lives of his people.  

In his estimation of the 400 beneficiaries picked from Mang’u, about 250 have transformed and are currently engaged in income generating projects. “There is one man who surrendered his cheque of Sh20,000 to a secondary school in Gatukuyu to clear fees for his children,” he said.

Currently, as River Chania thunderously roars towards Thika, the smoke from dozens of improvised distilleries which dotted its rocky riverbed remains dissipated.

Up the treacherous valley, a ray of hope has pierced the smoky past as some of the rehabilitated drunks patiently wait for loans to restart their lives.

Some like Makwa Kaa Sober Self Help group have secured registration as they wait for money from the Jijenge kitty.

Every MCA in Kiambu has been given Sh1 million from the county kitty for development and some have already pledged to use it to assist the rehabilitated alcoholics.