==================More on Drinking Problems in Africa ======================
The good, the bad, and the ugly Kenyan drinker
FILE | DAILY NATION Busaa time: The drink may served in unhygienic conditions but its imbibers are not complaining.
It is only 3 pm at the Lucky Pub in Embakasi Village, but the doors are open and customers are flooding in. It is baking hot outside, and local residents have come seeking shelter — or maybe an early end to the work day.
"People drink too much. Even myself at this place. But there are many life pressures," says Mr Absalom Oguto, a regular patron.
At Sh260 a bottle, the cane liquor Oguto drinks is unaffordable for most. But around the corner, hidden in a dingy shed riddled with holes and filled with thick smoke, buckets of home-made busaa wait for the low, low price of Sh60 a litre.
This is the main problem facing safe drinking in the country, says Ms Kalika Ruparelia, a representative of Kafra Wines.
After the Mututho laws were passed, taxes on liquor became so high that poor people were forced to turn to illicit brews — including spirits like Yokozuna, which was responsible for the deaths of 22 people this month.
"Our cheapest bottle is Sh200, and even that is too much for many people in Kenya. The government needs to make it more affordable to have a safe drink because right now it's so expensive that people are brewing it in their sheds," she says.
She has a point — in slums across Nairobi, chang'aa distilleries and busaa breweries are commonplace.
Jacinda has been brewing busaa for more than 10 years in Embakasi Village. Although the brew, and its more powerful cousin chang'aa, were legalised in 2010, government regulations stipulate that the brews must be bottled and come with a warning label.
Bottling and labelling facilities are non-existent in Embakasi. This means Jacinda and her colleagues still face constant harassment from police.
"We don't mix ours with methanol. We know who does, they sell it from the windows quickly, quickly. But this is not how we do it," she explains.
The ugly
Unscrupulous vendors are the bane of police and bar owners these days. At the Loitokitok police station on the Tanzanian border, police recently seized 7,500 litres of methanol used to spike local brews. The extra kick gets people drunk faster — but it also blinds and kills them.
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