All I see around me are beer drinkers who wobble around on their feet carrying evidences of robust health in their large bellies. These, I understand, are called beer bellies. Now, I tell myself, these bellies must be bursting from pure health
This week, reader, we are going to take our minds off our many national and international problems. I definitely do not want to remind you about the odour oozing from the lower house of the national assembly regarding allegations of budget padding. No, I don’t think you need any reminder either of how the dollar is climbing steadily on the ladder of success in Nigeria while the Naira is crashing, just as, of course, is the worth of my salary. These days, I find that earning more does not necessarily translate to more wealth for me.
This week, I say, we going for something much more exhilarating. We are pushing aside everything related to politics and economy because, man, this is one depressing family! We are going to talk about beer, today being beer day and all! So please, I beg you, don’t change the page. Just sit tight and read on. Let us both agree to be pleasantly distracted this week.
Let me start by making it very clear and loud that I do not drink beer and I am not necessarily proud of this fact. Like someone said, I am a hypocrite, but I am not proud of it. In other words, I envy those who drink it, socially of course. Certainly, I am not talking about those who make beer their lives. To such a one, I have only one piece of advice: Get yourself a life!
So, here, I am addressing those who have lives but take THE BEER just to keep their social images and their friends. To start with, I had no idea that up to a staggering three (3) billion bottles of beer are drunk on these Nigerian shores every year. Imagine, such a large party has been going on behind my back and I had no knowledge of it! Come on, people, you think that is fair?! I am not invited to that party; and I have been left to pick up the bottles in this YEAR OF THE BEER!
Let’s see how. That number, I am told, amounts to N600b of sales for the beer manufacturing companies. And those companies did not even stretch out a bottle to me and did they even think to share the profits with me. The question that the writer of that text message asked himself was who drank it, considering this is a nation of religionists. But that is not my problem. I have no cares about who drank or who did not drink what. My own questions are two: under what rock was I living when all these cheers were being distributed; and what does the average social drinker see in beer? In short, what’s in a beer?
The reason I do not drink beer is simple. I cannot abide the smell. However, from the figures quoted, I can certainly believe that the smell is not many people’s problem. Either that or their gazes are too trained on the cheer coming out of the cup for them to mind the smell. Whichever one it is, one thing is clear. This is officially a nation of beer drinkers, churches or mosques notwithstanding.
I giggle when I hear many people say that they do not take alcohol. They cannot stand alcohol. They are too pure to even smell alcohol. But, I assure you that is not my own problem. I think purity abandoned me a long time ago. That’s how I got the laughter to share with you, dear reader. Like someone said of a priest, he’s redeemed by his vices. Anyway, to those who say they do not take alcohol, I say welcome to the fold of The Purists. They can generally be found on the balcony of Life, looking down on the rest of us, for they do not take so much as cough mixtures.
Anyway, I will not try to answer that million dollar question about who dunnit posed by the writer of the text I referred to earlier. You can never know who drinks N600b worth of beer each year, mostly because you cannot see anyone do it. Many of the drinkers wait for the cover of dusk to do it. You see, they need all the peace and quiet for it.
My own second question is easily disposed of. I have been living in that seventies rock. It’s a place where you hear, see and know nothing else because the national corruption and economy have blocked your senses until you know nothing else. Now, let’s go to my first question.
As I was writing this, reader, an unbelievable message came in that listed all the things husbands have to do and be in order to keep their wives happy. The list includes more than sixty items. To make a man happy, on the other hand, there was a list of only three items: his TV, his phone and his beer. Hmmn!
This reminds me of the story of a man who was brought before a judge for being drunk. Oh, I’ve told you before? Good, you’ll hear it again. Well, asked the judge, why were you drunk? The man replied that he had been contracted by a woman to build a new henhouse from the materials of an old one but not to tear down the old one until he had finished the new. After listening to this, the judge was said to have dismissed the charges in sympathy. From that I got the idea that beer is supposed to contain some kind of stupid intelligence. I don’t think though that the man built the new henhouse. Now, I wonder why.
I really don’t know what it is in beer that makes it attract so many devotees to itself. I tell you, it’s almost another religion. Listen, some preacher somewhere announced that his chair had been taken away by someone. He then pleaded that they should please return it to him. That chair, said he, is what he sits on at the end of the day when he wants to take his beer. This was to impress upon his listeners what the chair meant to him.
I read in a report sometime back that beer is supposed to have some properties that prolong life. Seriously!; I thought that study had been contracted by someone deep in his cups. All I see around me are beer drinkers who waddle around on their feet carrying evidences of robust health in their rotund bellies. These, I understand, are called beer bellies. Now, I tell myself, these bellies must be bursting from pure health.
I have often looked with a kind of longing envy at men tired out from the day’s struggles, all sweaty and gloomy, faces longer than the rainbow drawn from one end of the sky to another. However, when the said faces light on a chilled can of beer even more sweaty than they are, they get transformed to one beatific look that resembles the type many of us have reserved for the second coming. I believe I hear their hearts racing and see the mouths drooling as the swoosh of can opening brings out the foamy substance. I am thinking: only in beer is there such worship of stupidity; such unholy communion!
So, I guess we’ll never know what’s in a beer, but I know it’s something the men, and a few women too, have pulled to their corner, leaving the rest of us wondering. Might it just contain a tad of intelligence, cheer, stupidity, escape, or the touching of tomorrow’s hope? I guess we’ll never know. There’s too much swoosh going on around us, 3b. Now, let’s go face that dollar exchange problem again.
