Experience is the best teacher

For the crew, experience is the best teacher.

Years of hanging out have taught us that what matters is not just who you are hanging out with, but also where.

This is why the ultimate crew, under my drunken and smoke-free misrule, will never jump for any beer drinking invitation without asking: Who is around? What stuff is on the table? Where? How is it being taken— plain or on the rocks? Accapela or with some snacks? Why or why not?

Nsanje Laranje? Lilongwe- Mpenu? Thyolo-Thava, Karonga- Nyungwe or Chitipa-Wenya? Their translation is a subject for another day. Now let’s talk only of drinking.

This is supposed to be commonsense, but it is not commonplace anyway.

This is why many adults still jump without asking themselves how high is safe for them.

Maybe I am preachy.

But this is what hangovers can do to penniless men with a pathological allergy for cheap liquors gulped morning, noon, evening and at night–time by our jobless young brothers in narrow, dark corners where snakes fear to pass.

We are talking about the so-called Devil streets, where massive youth unemployment wears the face of youthful drunkards emptying beer from plastic jerry cans all day.

The youth?

M a y b e .

Some look quite old really— with swollen faces, fresh wounds and scars all over their bodies and toothless jaws like goats.

The Crew refuses to visit

drinking joints where angels fear to take a sip of the finest booze on offer—the places where one fistfight signals the beginning of others to come.

No to pubs where we ask ourselves: “Do I want to be disfigured like them when I drink my last?”

Z i m a t i w e n g a !

We are safer home.

In fact, any step in that direction of destruction pushes us dozens backwards to drunken settings where our hearts, livers, lungs, minds and reasoning find endless peace.

This is why we still had to think about our safety when a member of the crew phoned one Saturday morning.

“Crew leader, I need some company,” he said.

“Some company?” I asked.

“Yes, you got me right,” he said. “I want someone to hang out with.”

“Where are you?” I quizzed.

“Machinjiri. At some hideout,” he said.

But Machinjiri is no small town. It is another world in Blantyre City— vast and more populous than Iceland.

In which part of Michigan was he?

“Just behind Chikapa Market.”

“It’s not yet 9am,” I laughed, asking: “So what company do you want? A woman?”

He refused.

“A thin-teen?”

He retorted: “If all planets accused him of dating a teenager, my creator would tell them I only eat ripe fruits not salads of immaturity.”

“So do you want big ones?” I cross-examined him.

And he responded honourably.

“I really love them big and round, but I would have stayed home to hang out with my wife if I wanted an XL lady. Your sister-in-law ticks all boxes. But that’s not why I did not stay home to apologise for hanging out all night-long yesterday.”

What do men and women do when they ‘sleep out’? Surely, pubs are not hotels.

But what happens in Vegas remains in Vegas.

The truth is the Honourable Crew Member needed company and he meant well.

His words were sweet to the right ear.

“I need you by my side in a bottle’s time,” he said. “I am at this wonderful bar, with nice flowers, nice trimmed grass, no loud music and maximum privacy. But the tragedy is that the refrigerator is stacked with perfectly chilled bottles with no-one to help me save them from the cold. If you don’t come, they will freeze to breaking point.”

I knew he was lonely. The mention of cold beers seldom speaks of flawless fridges but low sales.

But the guarantees of privacy were persuasive enough for a person who takes no m’kalabongo spirits or illegal herbs.

“I’ll be there before you swallow 10 sips,” I assured him.

“Great. When you get to Chikapa, just ask for the bar of Hastings or Fletcher. You will find me there.”

Truth to that, I quickly jumped into a minibus to Chikapa in Machinjiri where I found him nesting on a basket chair in some fence.

As a matter of fact, the pub has no name.

He called for a queue of cold ones until regulars told us they love the bar, as nameless as it is, because those with no idea how potbellied gentlemen mess up just call it ‘the decent place’.

But neither The Black Missionaries nor any male ward countrywide knows a more male-dominated place than the nameless pub.

Actually, my first reaction was the men who filled up the place by noon would emerge frontrunners if the Pope, my namesake, really opened the doors of seminaries, sacristies and monasteries for married priests.

I was in a crew which seemed to fear their wives and the rest of women folk with all their might and kidneys.

The predominantly drum-bellied imbibers were extremely friendly, but those who smoke, steal and urinate anyhow beware. It’s suicide.