Reclaiming Husbands in Kenya

Bar owner Paul Minua knows this much: Hell hath no fury like women scorned, neglected and abused by their drunken husbands.

Minua, 35, was tending his bar in this scenic region of central Kenya one recent Sunday when about 30 angry women carrying sticks and stones stormed in. They demanded that he stop selling the high-proof alcohol known to leave sons and husbands helpless, violent, even blind or dead.

The ringleader was Mary Watiri, a 43-year-old grandmother Minua had known since childhood. Despite his protests, Watiri and her comrades jumped behind the counter, grabbed bottles of the cheaply made moonshine and emptied them on the floor.

Others broke open a storeroom, where they found more cases of the liquor. Taking hundreds of the plastic bottles outside, the women emptied them of their dark brown contents one by one--to the cheers of a small crowd that had gathered.

“We have come to bury changaa,” the women sang out in their native Kikuyu, using the local name for moonshine. “All we want is peace. Until sales of these brews are stopped, the sellers will never sleep.”

“You could see the anger on their faces,” Minua recalled. “I had to run for my life. They would have killed me.”

Watiri and her neighbors in this coffee- and tea-growing region are part of a grass-roots movement sweeping Kenya and other African countries, from Uganda to Swaziland. Fed up with governments’ refusal to take action against distillers of dangerous alcoholic concoctions, women from urban slums to rural villages are forming posses and shutting down bars and so-called drinking dens.

High-proof alcohol has proliferated in recent years as distillers, bar owners and makers of traditional brews have targeted poor people looking for a cheap high. One Kenyan company boasts that its assortment of alcoholic drinks--including a product it calls Vatican Special Wine--was created “with the hard-hit Kenyan in mind.” Studies have shown that many rural villagers and slum dwellers in African countries have resorted to alcohol production in a desperate attempt to eke out a living.

When husbands virtually abandon their homes for strong drink, wives have to take over providing for their families.

In Kenya, the behavior of the female activists sometimes borders on mob justice. Even so, top lawmakers, the country’s anti-drug czar and even the Roman Catholic Church have given the movement their blessing, calling it the only effective way to halt rampant alcoholism.

“These women should be saluted,” said Joseph Kaguthi, whom President Daniel Arap Moi recently appointed to lead Kenya’s anti-drug efforts. “I am not going to have sleepless nights because these women are pouring harmful liquor.”

Catholic Bishop Peter Kihara, who oversees 31 parishes in Muranga, calls what the women are doing “the only way to stop the total destruction of this community.”

“Changaa is turning men into zombies and wrecking families. The community needs these women to save it,” Kihara said.

Unlike the women of the temperance movement in the U.S., the Kenyans are not railing against consumption of all alcohol. They are targeting mainly changaa--moonshine made largely from maize, sorghum or sugar cane. Government chemists say it is often laced with methanol, battery acid, embalming fluid and even industrial toilet cleaners.

“Some of these brewers add everything to boost their potency,” said Henry Mokaya, a senior chemist with the Kenya Bureau of Standards. “Many of these brews have the kick of a mule, but they are poisonous.”

Kenyan media frequently feature reports of people who died after drinking changaa. This month, seven people died after drinking a beverage they looted from an overturned vehicle in Mt. Kenya. Among them was a 15-year-old high school student.

Two years ago, about 150 people died and 500 others were hospitalized after drinking hooch sold in two slums of the capital, Nairobi. The beverage was known as kumi kumi, Swahili for “10-10,” because a mug cost only 10 Kenyan shillings--a little more than a dime.

Many women woke up to find their husbands’ corpses lying next to them, while some of the drinkers woke up to permanent darkness. They had gone blind because the kumi kumi contained methanol, which can destroy the optic nerves.

Watiri lives in the village of Wanjerere, on the slopes of the Aberdare Range. The year-round temperature averages about 50 degrees--cool enough to nurture the pear orchard in her front yard and perfect for growing tea, which Watiri and other villagers rely on for their livelihoods.

Until recently, the Muranga district was among the most prosperous in Kenya. Coffee from the region fetched among the highest prices at gourmet coffee shops around the world. But in the mid-1990s, Muranga and its 400,000 people were hit by plummeting coffee prices and a Kenyan government decision to halt subsidies to farmers.

Hundreds of men lost their jobs, and about 60% of Muranga’s people now live below the poverty line, meaning that their households earn less than $1 a day.

Meanwhile, Muranga’s men took to drink. Many reported to the bars before 8 a.m. and returned home late at night.

Watiri’s husband, Peter, was a regular at the Aberdare Bar. He had worked for several years protecting the lions, elephants and rhinoceroses at Aberdare National Park from poachers--until he was fired for being drunk on the job.

Watiri became the family breadwinner. Most days, she woke at 4 a.m., milked the cow, trudged a mile to fetch water from the river, prepared breakfast for her six children and sent them off to school before heading out to take care of the family’s 2,000 tea bushes.

Peter, for his part, nursed his drinks at the Aberdare Bar, spending the lion’s share of the $900 the family earned annually from selling tea leaves.

The beverages Peter and his fellow topers consumed contained at least 50% alcohol, making many people here suspect that--as is routine in Kenya--officials had received kitu kidogo, “a little something,” to look the other way.

Peter and the other men drank changaa because of the price. A bottle of Kenya’s popular Tusker Lager beer costs the equivalent of 50 cents. For the same price, they could buy half a liter of changaa, which guaranteed them a buzz for the entire day.

Nightly wife beatings, along with other kinds of domestic abuse, became routine.

Watiri said Peter began taking their 14-year-old son to the bar and that, on many occasions, the two would return home, pick up machetes and fight, while the couple’s other children and grandchildren screamed in horror. The next morning, father and son would deny that anything had happened.

Other women complained about sodden adult sons stripping naked in front of them, about men who wet the bed and husbands and boyfriends whose drinking rendered them impotent.

“The only thing that makes them men are their trousers,” said Emma Wairimu, one of Watiri’s neighbors.

“They cannot perform their matrimonial duties,” she said, adding, “It’s rare to find a pregnant woman in this entire village.”

James Waweru, chairman of the local municipality, blames rampant alcoholism for a dramatic drop in Muranga birthrates. This year, enrollment at some primary schools fell by half, he said.

“If this kind of drinking continues, this community is facing total collapse,” Waweru said.

In December, Watiri decided to do something. She asked other women to meet her after church, and they formed the Wanjerere Anti-Corruption Group, whose sole aim was to rid the village of potent libations.

First, the women asked District Commissioner Obondo Kajumbi, the top government official in Muranga, to help. He told them that there was little he could do because most of the bars were licensed to sell liquor.

A few days later, Watiri and her friends visited Minua, the owner of the Aberdare Bar, and gave him an ultimatum: He had three days to get rid of his strong drink, or else they would do it themselves.

They kept their appointment.

Watiri knew that she was running a risk. Among the patrons in the bar when the women descended on it was her husband, who screamed at her to go home. When she refused, he hit her several times, throwing her to the ground.

But Watiri considered the raid a success. The women had captured the village’s attention.

A week later, Watiri and her comrades walked 15 miles to another small town, where they stormed into bars and disposed of several hundred bottles of strong liquor. At one point, they spotted a truck that was about to deliver a fresh supply. One woman threw a rock at the vehicle, smashing its windshield.

The rock-thrower spent the night in detention, but the next morning, other women in the group sacrificed their families’ grocery money and raised $200--a significant sum here--to bail her out.

At home, Watiri also reaped success. Shocked and embarrassed by what she had done, Peter soon quit drinking.

“He says he was lost, and he constantly asks me to forgive him,” Watiri said. “If he was drinking, he’d be at the bar, but now he’s working in the [tea fields]. Everything is OK now.”

Word of the women’s action spread. In one nearby village, women borrowed their strategy, closing down several bars and parading an owner through the town center, where they forced him to promise that he would stop selling strong drink.

Watiri and her comrades also made enemies. At the Grogan Bar in nearby Kihoya, owner Kamau Mohindi talked about how he would defend his premises.

“They are women, but I would still fight with them,” Mohindi said. “This is how I make a living. We are not pumping the liquor down their husbands’ throats.”

It was only 10 a.m., but already the two dozen men in Mohindi’s small bar were drunk and begging a visitor to buy a round.

Villagers said several bar owners had hired thugs to battle women who invade their bars.

Still, Watiri said, she is not worried. Her group received a boost recently when local government officials instructed police not to interfere with its campaign.

“We have to support the women,” said Kajumbi, the district commissioner, “because they are the conscience of the community.”

Now, Watiri said, she and her friends want to use their new sense of empowerment to further improve their lives.

Recently, the women told the landlord of the Aberdare Bar that if he kicked out Minua, they would open a food cooperative on the premises, enabling all the village’s families to buy staples at lower prices.

The women also have talked about pooling their money to bring a fuel station to Wanjerere, so that people wouldn’t have to travel 25 miles to buy kerosene for their stoves and lamps.

“These are all dreams, but we can’t turn back now,” Watiri said. “For the first time in many years, we feel we have control of our lives.”