Escape From The Authorities.

I had forgotten that Sundays aren't particularly good for anyone in the countryside, especially in the rural villages like our Sokomoko in Soymining of Kapomboi Location. Ever since I quite hitting the bottle and hard stuff almost two decades ago, when weekends saw the village footpaths deserted, I hadn't ventured out much. Back then, the flat-foots, aided by the Police Reservists commonly known as home-guards or KPRs, had the tendency of raiding the villages in such of chang'aa sellers and consumers.

Last Sunday refreshed my mind on one particular incident in the early 2000s when I had gone to Katuke in quest of a chang'aa debt that one of the sellers had taken her time to pay. I used to brew the illicit liquor and retail it to illicit vendors at a subsidy. But most of the sellers hardly settled a debt. Normally, they'd pay half the amount in bits and altogether refuse to live up to it, citing being busted by the Police. And as there was no way one could ascertain if indeed one had been arrested and fine-charged at the local kangaroo-courts by the village police, one was content to let matters be on mutual grounds. The courts were actually ramshackle police posts set up by the local administration all over the countryside and manned by powerful administrators aided by homeguards and of course Youth-Wingers of the Ruling-Party of those days. Well, I don't have to recount what victims of such raids went through in the hands of the police in there posts. That's a read for another day.

Back to that Sunday of the year 2000; my query is still not willing to pay me. Her usual story of the authorities having taken 'rent' the previous day. I'm pissed off and thinking of taking my leave and never again set foot here. There's a commotion outside. I peer out through the window and what I see sinks my heart. About half a dozen uniformed men have surrounded the house.

" We are done!" I breathe out through clenched teeth. In the room adjacent to where I sat, drunkards are singing un-melodious slurred tunes. Suddenly, the chanting dies down as it dawns on them that they are face to face with the LAW.

" Stand up and face the wall! " someone barks authoritatively. There's a commotion as furniture is pushed back by the occupants scrambling for space against the walls. The seller and I in the next room are petrified in our chairs.

There were sounds of cufflinks and keys turning as men were cuffed together in pairs. Suddenly, the voice that had been in command cursed and swore loudly as feet trampled and jammed in the doorway. The dozen or so uniformed guys that had surrounded the house ran to the front of the house.

I leaped out of the window in one bound and crashed into a gun-wielding homeguard. The poor blighter was as startled as I was and before he could recover his composure I was on my feet and running straight into the maize-plantation. I could hear someone breathing down my neck and this propelled me into more aggressive flight. I couldn't bear the thought of a cold night in an overcrowded cell with its pails of overflowing excrement. I jumped over an unused pit-latrine whose roof and walls had caved in and was almost overgrown with weeds. My pursuer was not so lucky. He crushed into the pit and howled in agony as his shin broke with a snap not unlike a piece of sugarcane. I looked back over my shoulder in time to see a couple of uniformed men bent over their broken colleague. I blessed my lucky stars and doubled my efforts.

I later learned that not a single soul was arrested that day. The police were busily attending to their injured comrade when the culprits broke loose and ran away.

Fast-toward to December 2017. It's ages since I last took alcohol. It's also ages since I led that unfortunate cop into a disused latrine. I'm going through Sokomoko on my way from work at Sabwani. I had left my motor cycle at Soymining Centre because the River Kaibei, which I have to cross on my way home, had burst its banks and the floods had covered the bridge. Hence it'd be suicidal trying to take the bike across. As I plowed through the mud on the only feeder-road in the village, I could see the headlights of a car flashing in the twilight. It had to be a big powerful car that could ply our roads in this weather. And this could only mean the police were out on the prowl again. The car was skidding sideways as it came on towards me. When it was within a half a kilometre of me I decided to run out of their way. The money-hungry police would never let anyone out of their clutches without parting with a sizeable wad, that much I knew. So I ran hard and fast until I was way out of their reach. Then I retraced my footsteps and found my way home.

The following morning I was greeted with the news that the cops had made a major haul last night. They had impounded over 200 litres of chang'aa and forty culprits. Sadly though, amongst those arrested, was my elder brother. He had gone over to his favourite joint to irrigate his parched throat with Jeremiah's waters imported from Uganda, reverently variously known as Kawempe and Simba Mbili. So here I was again looking for money to bail him out. When I finally got him out, he was so grateful he actually promised not to touch alcohol again.

But in a different development, I was to learn that my brother lamented the fact that the police had taken all that booze to the station. He was heard saying;

" This is a big loss actually. They ought to have taken only a litre to the station and left the rest to the hustlers behind. I was arrested not because I was drunk but because I pleaded with the police not to take away all the chang'aa."