Why alcoholics should stop drinking

Alcohol doesn’t solve problems, but then again, neither does milk. The fact that millions in Zimbabwe spend so much time and money drinking should be a significant issue for debate. The big question is why people drink, while the alcoholic will wonder why people don’t. There are many ‘social drinkers’ out there. The excuse, “I drink to socialise,’ is as common as a hangover for the alcoholic in denial.

The most incredible answer I have heard was the friend who said that by drinking beer he was being humanitarian. If he were to stop drinking, he surmised, a lot of people in the brewing industry and other downstream industries would lose their jobs. The worst was a friend who said, “"Terrorists, Lenox. They've taken over my stomach and they're demanding beer."

You can easily classify Zimbabweans into two groups; those who go to church and those who go to the bottle store. Trying to get the two to meet has been on of life’s greatest challenges. The debate has divided Christians, with the Catholics and Anglicans allowing their flock (and their priests) to take alcohol ‘with moderation,’ the major problem being the extent of ‘moderation.’ To the imbiber, that term can range from 2 pints to 20 as long as he is still standing. To the full blown Christian fundamentalist, a sip is one too many.

The topic that dominates the bars and pulpits is about the rising in the costs of alcohol. The Christians, admittedly, aren’t claiming victory just yet. They know that the drought is only as long as beer drinkers can’t afford a tipple. When the economy does turn around, the reality is that the new converts would desert faster than you can spell the word ‘beer,’ ‘reality’ being the illusion that occurs due to lack of alcohol. The challenge that the churches face is how to keep these chaps inside and away from the booze.

Christian institutions should sponsor an interactive campaign using available new media to discourage drinking. This is to counter those cynical adverts by the alcoholic beverages manufacturing fraternity that speak with a forked tounge and proclaim that consumption of alcohol may be harmful to one’s health. Then going on to extol the refreshing qualities of the slow poison! What cheek!

As a community service may I offer the Christian fraternity examples of the realistic messages they can push in their campaign:

• WARNING: Consumption of alcohol may cause you to thay shings like thish.
• Consumption of alcohol may make you think you are whispering when you are not.
• Consumption of alcohol may cause you to tell the same boring story over and over and over and over and over and over….
• Consumption of alcohol may leave you wondering what the hell happened to your trousers.
• Consumption of alcohol may cause you to wake up with breath that could curdle a pint of milk at 100 metres.
• Consumption of alcohol may cause you to roll over in the morning and see something really scary (whose species and/or name you can't remember).
• Consumption of alcohol may lead you to think people are laughing with you.
• Consumption of alcohol may actually cause pregnancy.
  

What’s my position in all this? I will leave you with a quote from Stephen Wright who once said, “24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a crate. Coincidence?”

Tips on how to gatecrash a function

Recent developments have resulted in beer drinkers being down-listed to Appendix 3, endangered species. The rise in prices – yet again – of beer has had wives celebrating and placed die-hards munguva yakaoma chaizvo, chaizvo. Yes, some are calling it quits after failing to cope with the hikes without having to starve their families to death. The honeymoon had to end at some point. The brewers for their part are finding it hard to justify the punitive increases and their very existence.

So much for moaning, as they say, desperate times demand desperate measures. In spite of the price-induced beer drought that is scotching the nation, there remain institutions that are so well-heeled that they perceive hikes to be a minor nuisance. The country will never run short of individual and companies that will throw the occasional function to celebrate one thing or the other. Now, do you get what I am driving at?

It was Karl Max who wrote about societal inequalities and the redistribution of wealth. So in a sense, those companies that have money to throw around should consider a bit of social responsibility and share the loot with the unfortunate members of society. Those who, for reasons entirely beyond their control, can’t even afford a single drop of their favourite brew. However, for some selfish reason, these same said companies forget to extend a simple invitation to these poor souls. This leaves no choice but for them to invite themselves to the party! Yeah!

Do not misconstrue my intentions here. I am not about to advocate for anarchy. No ways. I am just saying that people need to be innovative, to think outside the box, as it were, if they are to survive the beer drought. Bluntly put, to gatecrash a function seems just about the only solution. Unless, of course you won the Lotto or suddenly found yourself in the last will and testament of some stinking rich but very dead relative.

So in the interest of sanity and the good of the inebriated side of humanity, I will share a few tips on the dos and don’ts of gate-crashing a function. First, you got to have a plan in place, ne? Target your functions carefully and do some background research. Is it a celebration or a serious gig? Banks are bound to throw both of a kind. Are there any bouncers or security at the door with long invitation lists, or do they employ the pesky PR types who seem to know everyone by face?

Dress for the occasion. Avoid looking as if you are a crime waiting to happen or as if you just fell off a very tall tree. Invest in a dark suit, it speaks volumes. Look the part and be prepared to drop a few important names in your conversations. It means that, God forbid, you have to watch ZTV so that you can recognise the faces that matter. Getting past the entrance requires great skills of deception. You have to look as if you are supposed to be there. Do not wait to be interrogated or fidget around. Chances are that whoever is manning the gate is in no mood to be chasing uninvited guests round the venue. Unless you are dealing with a bouncer or worse still a security guard.

Once you are inside, you have to maintain your composure. The PR types are sure to smell trouble a mile away. Their job, by the way is to keep the function off the front page of Umthunywa. Tempted as you may be, imbibe within reasonable limits. I know that the word ‘reasonable’ does not exist in an alcoholic’s dictionary. But at least you can try.

Get to know who the host is to avoid what happened to my young brother some years ago. After successfully making past the bouncer, he ended up being the barman. He made the mistake of denying what he thought was a super-arrogant guest his share of whisky. He was to discover, after being tossed over the durawall by a very big monya for hire, that the chap he had called a village idiot was the owner of the party!

Glossary

Appendix 3: Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) classifies elephants in this category.
Nguva yakaoma: hard times
ZTV: Zimbabwe Television
Unthunywa: A gunk unearthing Ndebele language tabloid
Durawall: Pre-cast wall.
Monya: Slang for bouncer

How we would win the World Cup of Complaining

If complaining were a competitive sport, then Zimbabweans would surely win the World Cup hands down. We complain about everything and anything. Are we just outright rabble-rousing pests or it’s simply because we always get the short end of the stick when it comes to the products and services that we shell our hard earned cash for. That, of course, depends on which side of the counter you are standing. However, one cannot deny the fact that it is our constitutional right to complain. Even if there is nothing specifically wrong. For them to know who exactly is king, we have to keep these guys on their toes.

One has to admit that at times clarity becomes an issue when we attempt to put our case across. I should know because I was, in one of my nine occupational lives, the Senior Public Relations Officer of the City of Bulawayo. Entertaining complains and trying to solve them took a significant chunk of my time and I must admit that some of the gripe turned out to be quite hilarious. I will attempt to share some of the complaints with you having carefully edited out the authors. Many were anonymous, of course. But if you are one of those who make it a habit of writing letters of complaint to the City Council, then you should be very embarrassed to read these, here we go:

• I wish to complain that my father hurt his ankle very badly when he put his foot in the hole in his back passage.
  The lavatory is blocked; this is caused by the boys next door throwing their balls on the roof.
• This is to let you know that there is a smell coming from the man next door.
• The toilet seat is cracked, where do I stand?
• I am writing on behalf of my sink, which is running away from the wall.
• I am still having trouble with smoke in my built in drawers.
• I request your permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen.
• Our lavatory seat is broken in half and is now in three pieces.
• Can you please tell me when our repairs are going to be done as my wife is about to become an expectant mother.
• The toilet is blocked and we cannot bath the children until it is cleared.
• Will you please send someone to mend our broken path? Yesterday my wife tripped on it and is now pregnant.
• Our kitchen floor is very damp, we have two children and would like a third, and so will you please send someone to do something about it.
• Would you please repair our toilet, my son pulled the chain and the box fell on his head.
• Will you please send a man to look at my water; it is a funny colour and not fit to drink.
• This is to let you know that our lavatory seat is broken and we cannot get the ZBC.
• When I applied for a rebate you said that you would have to take something off. Now that you have taken it off, I have been told that you should have put some on. So will you please take off what you took off and put on what you should have put on when you took it off?
  

And now a special request to you. If you are planning to send a complaint to the City fathers, why don’t you wing it by us first so that we can have a very good laugh and then file it for future columns? That’s being a sport. If all of you did that, then we will have enough material to take our mind of these depressing times. And I am dead serious on this one futhi!

Enter the landlady from Hell

There are landlords (ladies) and lodgers. Some would prefer to be called tenants because it sounds sophisticated. But it’s the same thing, that is, someone who pays rent to live on someone else’s property. Not everyone chooses to be a tenant and no one wishes to be one forever. But due to circumstances beyond their control, some people find themselves in this untenable position, to excuse the pun.

What is wrong in being a lodger…eh…tenant? On the surface, nothing, but to the landlord there seems to be something definitely wrong. It has something to do with one being in the over-class or the underclass where the latter is made to feel really downtrodden, to borrow revolutionary phraseology.

Take the term ‘Lord’ which means “a man who rules over people.” From the experience of some poor souls who have had to endure the excesses of being at the mercy of property owners who think they are gods, one wonders whether its really worth going through the ordeal.

A friend decided to move out of the ghetto to conform to his newfound status that afforded him a more spacious abode in one of the leafy eastern suburbs. The family’s landlady, if we may call her that, owned two houses next to each other, one of which she decided to rent out, a classic Diaspora success story.

The first problem, which initially did not seem obvious, was the fact hat my friend had a car which the landlady, for some inexplicable reason, did not possess. One morning he was told that he revved up his car too loudly in the mornings. This he took to be a reasonable complaint. Then he was told his car, Willowville Mazda 323, was “too heavy” for the driveway. Next thing he was asked if he could possibly leave it at work!

That was just the beginning. He was to endure surprise inspections for which his brave wife bore the brunt. The landlady would animatedly harangue the wife or maid, (depending on who was home at the time) about the way the family ‘depreciated’ the value of her property. The besieged family’s sins included hanging too much laundry outside, “crowding” the house with furniture and entertaining too many visitors.

The crunch came when my unsuspecting friend acquired a satellite dish. He received a strongly-worded letter asking who he thought he was causing such a major defect on her outside wall without consulting the landlady? Initially, he thought this to be a joke. Not until he came home one evening to find the offending gadget removed and grounded in the garage.

Why? You guessed right. How dare a tenant enjoy the sophistication of watching several television channels when the lord of the manor had none? My friend’s tenancy lasted two action- packed months. Apart from giving him enough tales to entertain his workmates for years, he says it tested the limits of his tolerance. He says all being things being equal, he could have strangled the lady the very week he moved in.

Have you had a ‘Landlord Experience’ you would love to share? Like the one where a house owner attempted to impose some rudimentary from of population control by telling his tenants that he would be “very happy if they kept the size of their family within reasonable limits.” Tenants (read lodgers) in the Western Suburbs have to endure the misdemeanours of their landlords, like having their property attached. Or which tenant will turn down the amorous advances of the landlord or lady if there was the threat that you could find your expensive property exposed to the elements at the drop of a…eh…hat? Let us share those juicy tales.

If you swear and drive, you must be sick!

I am not alone in thinking that there is something intrinsically wrong with most commuter bus drivers and their foul-mouthed touts. It was not until I read an article in the Journal of Psychiatry that there are people who suffer from a disease that manifests itself when one is on the road. To you, that angry, swearing, horn-blasting, moron has road rage. But doctors have another name for it - intermittent explosive disorder or IED for short. A new study suggests it is far more common than we realised, affecting up to 47% of all drivers.

People think its bad behaviour and that one just needs an attitude adjustment, but what they don't know, writes Dr Emil Coccaro, chairperson of psychiatry at the University of Chicago's medical school, is that there's a biology and cognitive science to this. Road rage, temper outbursts that involve throwing or breaking objects and even spousal abuse can sometimes be attributed to the disorder, though not everyone who does those things is afflicted, thank God. The disorder typically first appears in adolescence; in the study, the average age of onset was 14. Remember throwing those tantrums at the toy shop when uBaba refused to buy you that 4x4 jeep toy car? Ehe!

By definition, intermittent explosive disorder involves multiple outbursts that are way out of proportion to the situation. These angry outbursts often include threats or aggressive actions and damage to property…and individuals. Sounds familiar? Now that places our dear commuter drivers and touts firmly in this sphere of illness, mental illness my dear friends and this is dead serious!

For instance I was shocked beyond words the other day when I eavesdropped – if one can call it that – on a casual conversation between a driver and his trusted companion (read uWindi) on how they would be able to afford a straight of brandy if they unilaterally raised the commuter fare to $150,000. Now, are these chaps sick or what? Which goes to show how unjustified some of the increases are, motivated by greed more than anything else.

Coccaro said the disorder involves inadequate production or functioning of serotonin, a mood-regulating and behaviour-inhibiting brain chemical. Treatment with anti-depressants, including those that target serotonin receptors in the brain, is often helpful, along with behaviour therapy akin to anger management.

Now these psychiatrists seem to have found that IED is more common than previously thought. Yeah, right! Thina, we knew it all along that these guys, and quite a sizeable number of drivers need help and fast before they kill someone.

Which reminds me of the following incident where a father, who worked away from home all week, always made a special effort with his family at the weekends. Every Sunday morning he would take his daughter out for a drive in the car. One particular Sunday however, he was so full of cold that he really didn't feel like driving at all. Luckily, his wife came to the rescue and decided that for this week she would take their daughter out. They returned just before lunch and the little girl ran upstairs to see her father.

"Well" the father asked, "Did you enjoy your ride with mummy?"
"Oh yes Daddy" the girl replied, "And you know what... we didn't see a single bastard!"