Antics of a village soaked in weed and drink

By James Mwangi

Strange brews allegedly served with cannabis in the deeper reaches of Murang’a County are fast turning men who irrigate their throats with the concoction while smoking the weed into weird mortals.

Reportedly, the makali (spirits), which retail at Sh10, are accompanied with weed costing an equivalent amount of cash on a patron’s request. Not surprisingly, the area has become an arena for theatrics.

 “In certain pubs, which are known, sellers serve marijuana on request. The outcome is the weird things we see and hear about around here,” Patrick Njoroge, a resident, claims.

However, their worries have little to do with drug abuse. Smoking weed, they say, is no longer a big deal there. Rather, it is the strange beings that husbands, fathers and sons become after visiting the dens that are sending tongues wagging.

Wife batterring, idleness, robbery and all manner of bizarre and shocking acts have become a common fixture.

To constantly satisfy their insatiable thirsts for the makali and weed combination, some addicts have sold anything they can lay their hands on, including their ‘roofs’.

A young mother, Irene Waithira, laments that women have become the bearers of pain and humiliations of the wickedness that has slipped into the male species.

Last year, a normally laid back father of four, who was not even known to indulge in booze, thrashed his wife until she miscarried twins. 

The carpenter staggered home and from the blue picked a quarrel with his pregnant wife before kicking her bulging tummy several times. She lost her unborn babies on the way to hospital.

Acrobatics

In another instance, a young man, George, felt his trouser was becoming a bother after drinking. In broad daylight, and at a shopping centre, he got rid of everything then started performing acrobatics to a shocked crowd.  According to his mother, he had also dug a seven-foot deep pit under his bed to hide from unseen intruders.

Shockingly, the evil bug has even stung the learned ones. A high school teacher went wild at a crowded market centre and started to jump up down while noisily releasing ‘pent-up gas’. And this, they also say, has become his pet stunt whenever drunk, which is quite often.

Horror

A villager told Crazy Monday that the teacher’s four-year old son has adopted this act and when asked about it he says; “Baba ekaga uu (dad does this)” ,then jumps up and down while faking sounds associated with breaking wind when nature doesn’t supply the resources to accompany the stunt.

It is, however, an old man who startled people to silence.

He staggered home when the family was ensconced in the kitchen preparing rice for supper.

He muttered several expletives then walked straight to the boiling food, removed his pants and unperturbedly relieved himself on the food as his wife and children watched in horror.

According to Mama Njuguna, a resident, such cases are common but are kept secret to avoid family embarrassment.