Nutty friends and neigbours make my retirement exciting

BY BENSON RIUNGU

KENYA: I do not know if people in other parts of the country are blessed – or cursed – with the kind of neighbours and relatives I am surrounded with in my Uturine Village.

It is a cast of characters that is guaranteed to keep someone with a journalistic mind permanently engaged. Perhaps the most interesting are my cousin and friend Muciari and his elder brother Cibi, a man who once believed he had an inalienable right to the contents of my wallet.

Whenever I was in the village and planned to go out, Cibi would materialise and get into the passenger seat of my car. If I foolishly inquired where he was going, he would look at me in surprise and say, “Wherever you are going, of course.” This liberty did not stop at joy rides but extended at eating and drinking whenever I did — at my expense of course.

I was surprised, therefore, to be at the village on a more or less permanent basis and find that Cibi, a man once famed across the length and breadth of Igoji for his stomach’s ability to process any alcoholic substance that the brewing and distilling industry — both legal and illegal — could throw at him, has recanted his old ways and now confines himself to the joys of tea. This is a beverage he consumes in vast quantities.

When, the other day, I asked him about this radical change in lifestyle, he said he had started hearing voices in his head. Incidentally, these voices coincided with outward behaviour that forced villagers to take him to hospital restrained in the local version of the straitjacket, ropes.

Drunk

Muciari is not much unlike the Cibi of old, although the process through which he gets drunk is a mystery to anyone but the keenest observer such as myself. I once wondered, could he be stone sober one moment and incoherent ten minutes later, until I realised that this effect was caused by little bottles of an illegal substance that he kept in the inside pockets of his jacket.

I am told that these bottles are known as ‘exhibit’ in drinking circles because their possession could cause serious problems with the local administration courtesy of one John Mututho.

As I said, Muciari holds the local record for the ability to accelerate from sobriety to incoherence in no time at all. In the latter state, he is wont to brag that he is the local consultant for political heavyweights such as Meru Senator Kiraitu Murungi and Governor Peter Munya. In time, you learn that it is futile to hold him to these claims the following day.

Murder

Another of Muciari’s distinctions is that he was a twin brother to Father George, a Catholic priest who owned the most popular bar in Igoji before his mysterious murder some years ago. The popularity of ‘The Vatican’, as it was known, drew largely from the legend scrawled on one of the walls, ‘Drink and be merry for your sins shall be forgiven’.

It is claimed, perhaps by his detractors, that Fr George was in the company of a woman of questionable virtue when he was brutally murdered outside his bar at Miruriiri Shopping Centre on the Meru-Nairobi highway.

Ownership of the building that houses the bar and lodging rooms passed to Muciari after the good priest’s death. Unfortunately, the business has since fallen on hard times and when Muciari recently took me on a grand tour, we found the place in a parlous state. The lodging beds that once rocked with mostly illicit passion, have been stripped of mattresses and beddings and now groan under the weight of sacks of charcoal.

Wines

This was a sight that seemed to affect Muciari profoundly and he was heard to mumble ominously about terminating the tenancy of the current leasee.

It is a reflection of the liberal attitudes of the late Fr George and perhaps a number of his peers that Cibi still fondly recalls the goings-on at his priestly ordination party. While everyone else was getting merry on wines, bottled spirits and beer, Cibi insisted on his beloved machozi ya samba (chang’aa), which was duly delivered to the priests’ residence from the local distiller at Igoji Market a short distance away.

He did not stop at desecrating a holy place with an illcit brew; when pressed for a short call, he went to a corner of the room where the party was being held and relieved himself on an expensive carpet.

With friends and neighbours like these, life in retirement can never be dull.