Kachasu at the heart of George Township
By TREVOR LUBALA
IT is mid-morning on a working day in Lusaka’s George Township, and the residents can be spotted staggering all over the place while seemingly searching for the way to their respective homes.
All the people around this highly-populated community seem to share some common traits: they have strange behavior, they make unsteady movements, and their dressing is quite odd.
There is no co-ordination in their activities – some are singing, others are shouting, but yet, many more can be seen loudly laughing and pointing fingers at each other.
This is another typical day in the life of hundreds of George Township residents, who seem to be making beer drinking a life-time career. But the difference between the drunkards of this particular township and those from elsewhere lies in the type of beer they consume.
Whereas many people go for bottled beers and opaque beers such as chibuku, the residents of George Township fall for Kachasu, a local brew that takes as long as seven days to make, and is as strong as the spirits.
“Uyu indiye moba wathu zebige, niocipa elo futi usebenza musanga musanga (This is our beer big man, it’s cheap and works quickly),” says one scruffy middle-aged man, seemingly in his late 20s in Nyanja, Lusaka’s widely-spoken local language. “Moba winangu udula maningi but apa loko two pin ukolewa bwino bwino (other beers are expensive but for this one, even K2,000 is enough to get you drunk).
As one walks through the township, patches of smoke can be seen bellowing from the roof tops of several houses, before disappearing into thin air. The process is on-going to brew the beer that could be perfectly described as being ‘as strong as the people who drink it’.
At almost every other house, one would spot the ugly site of peculiar drums and containers that have been darkened by many days of overheating, resting on big stones set-up in a triangular fashion as gleams of fire peep through.
While beer traders in rural areas drill sticks in the ground on which empty yeast tins dangle as an advertisement for beer, no one can teach a resident of George compound the meaning of this arrangement of drums. They are all aware that it is a sign of availability of the powerful local brew, which perhaps because of its colour and vigor, some people call it in Bemba ‘Ifilamba fya Nkalamo’ (Tears of the lion).
Mary Mbewe, is one among many George Township residents who have ventured into the business of trading ‘the tears of the lion’. She says kachasu is an alcohol just like any other, and many people from both the higher income working class and the lower income class enjoy.
“Banthu bonse cabe baukonda maningi uyu moba, nigulitsa maningi pa month-end napama week-ends (People of all kinds like this beer very much, I sell more during the month-ends and week-ends,” she says.
As early as 08:00 hours in the morning everyday, people begin flocking to Ms Mbewe’s house to take pleasure in the flavour of her brew. They gather themselves in a temporal structure she has erected outside her house.
One man, looking pale and drowsy, sits on a stool next to a wheelbarrow containing some handful of garbage and a pair of dirty gloves. He introduces himself to this writer only as a man from the east, maybe from Chipata, and continues to wait for his bottle of beer.
“My brother, let no man cheat you. This is a beer that once you discover, you can never wish to stop. It’s so nice, I have even stopped taking bottled beers because one, I don’t get drunk on them any more, and two I spend a lot of money on them. But not for this beer,” says the man who seems to have gone some way in pursuing education, judging by his expressiveness in the official language.
While the interviewer is still trying to digest the points from the self-proclaimed ‘wiseman from the east’, a woman dressed in chitenge materials comes out of Ms Mbewe’s house with a small bottle of beer, gets on her knees, and hands the bottle to the ‘easterner’.
The man takes a few sips from the bottle, and immediately closes his eyes as if to mute a silent prayer, then after a while disfigures his face. Seconds later, his eyes and his mouth are wide open while he screams in satisfaction. He then shudders his head vigorously as he clears his throat. The ‘tears of the lion’ are beginning to do their trick on him!
Under the by-laws of the Lusaka City Council, brewing kachasu is illegal, and people like Ms Mbewe are doing their business at owners’ risk. She is well aware. “Kulesa nikwamene, tiziba iyo nkhani, but tilibe vinangu vochita. Mwamene umu, nimadyeseramo bana banga bathathu (I know it’s illegal but I have nothing else to survive on, I look after my three children out of this business),” Ms Mbewe explains.
She says authorities from the city council have been to her place a couple of times, and confiscated some of her apparatus. But she claims poverty has been pushing her back into the prohibited business.
Kachasu brewing is a tedious process. It starts with buying half germinated maize, which is later dried and then pounded before winnowing it using a winnowing basket to remove the wastes.
The mixture of fine half-germinated maize and sugar are then immersed in cold water and left for some days for fermentation to take place. During the cold season, fermentation is longer than in dry season scientifically because the enzymes are more active in higher temperatures.
After fermentation has taken place, water is drained from the mixture; that water is the most important liquor every kachasu brewer targets. Then a fire is prepared with firewood to heat up the ‘drained water’ in the drum.
The moment the water reaches its boiling point, alcoholic vapour escapes from the drum and passes through a pipe attached to it. This pipe runs into a tin as the vapour changes its state back into water, which is then recollected and packed in small containers.
The water being recollected is not mere liquid, but kachasu itself.
Despite Kachasu posing a lot of threats to human health, ranging from minor effects to critical ones including death, hundreds of George Township residents continue gulping tot after tot of the highly-flammable intoxicating liquid.
Ernest Mweemba, a lecturer of Sociology at Lusaka’s Evelyn Hone College attributes the continuous brewing of kachasu to the high poverty levels that have engulfed two thirds of people in Zambia. About 68 per cent of Zambians subside on a $1 or less per day, according to the Central Statistical Office, and over 70 per cent of the urban poor still live in high-density residential areas like George.
“Other than the issue of poverty, there is also the aspect of personal responsibility. These people who brew the beer as well as those who drink it have an option to go for others, but the problem is that they have internalised kachasu drinking and trading so much that they feel they can’t do without it,” says Mr Mweemba who has in the past done a lot of sociology practical research in Zambia and Namibia.
“We need proactive people, especially mothers because they are instrumental in bringing up a child in the family. If the mother is a drunkard or a beer trader, the child will grow up either hating the mother’s business or liking it very much.”
It’s a world of two extremes. And there is no mild zone; one has to either throw it away or embrace it wholly. But in the final analysis, it is a choice that every person has to independently make: whether to join hundreds of George Township’s kachasu brewers and drunkards, or to opt for more noble businesses and lifestyles.
