Whenever I walked to the village or went to town I found the streets and places littered with transparent plastic sacks of about size of A6. One day I picked one to find to find out what was in it. It’s content once was 1 dl of high-proof alcohol, Gin to be exactly. I was a bit astonished as they would sell it in sacks but this is Africa. I then tried to find out what this alcohol was made of but I’m still not sure. It’s either made of cassava, a root that they cultivate around here or a type of banana. They sell these sacks at 500 UGS (~0.17 CHF or ~ 0.20 US$), which is incredibly cheap. I’ve asked my workmates about this stuff and they told me that it’s very bad and can make one go blind (but still they would drink it themselves at times). I’ve once seen the effect when a workmate arrived under the influence of - as he said - only two sacks of this hooch.
I don’t want to be a moralist, but it makes me somehow angry and sad that there’s companies who sell that kind of stuff at such a low price and also that the government allows them to doing so. I know that excessive consumption of alcohol is a worldwide problem, even in Switzerland, but at least we may booze our brains away with certified hooch. But what makes me even more sad is the fact, that people spend so much money on alcohol and cigarettes (no matter where they live, no matter how poor they are, no matter how educated they are) while at home their kids have to starve or eventually even die from Malaria and other sicknesses.
Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark…
cheap booze in sacks (how pathetic to have a proud chief on the label…)
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