I own no wheels, so I drive my two feet. The only hi-Tec factor about my kind of ‘driving’ is the fact that I don’t ‘drive’ bare feet, I wear nice shoes. That is why I smile my way home, daring the seemingly drunk (as a result of being in contact with serious alcohol guzzlers for a long time as they ‘alco-test’ them) cops to bring on their alcohol testing gadgets and let me blow them. But of course they always wave me away because they have no business wasting their time with anyone who is not behind the wheel. To them, if you are behind the wheel and it is past midnight, then you are guilty till the alco-test proves otherwise. And trust me, majority of Rwandans fail the test –even the teetotallers. You see, this gadget was made in such a way that it detects alcohol even in one’s DNA-now show me any Rwandan who has no parent or relative who has been an alcoholic in their lifetime and I will immediately confiscate their ID and return it to NID. He or she is definitely not Rwandan! Anyway, there are rumours doing the rounds that birds are fully behind this anti-drunk driving wave in the city. I am told that the birds had a retreat recently and decided that there is no need of having power when you cannot exercise it. As you know, birds are the most powerful creatures in this country but because they were once called the weaker sex, they had not found the strength to come out of their cocoon and exercise their newly acquired strength (powers over their hunters). During the retreat they enumerated their powers, including majority control of parliament, numerous posts in ministries and elsewhere in the public and private sector and decided that they had to do something to show their muscle to their number one enemy –their hunters. I am told that one of them moved a motion and gave the saying that ‘charity begins at home’ and went ahead to tell her ‘comrades’ that they should start by exercising their powers at home. It turned out that the only way to do this was to do what has eluded them since time immemorial –restricting their hunters at home when they don’t have any serious business to take care of. Hunters have always been successful in evading all traps laid by the birds with intentions to keep them in their sitting rooms. Others use the excuse of ‘meetings’ at work, European football matches (after refusing to install DSTV at home) and other excuses. Unanimously, the birds decided that what keeps their hunters away from their watchful eyes is mainly alcohol –nebigenderako of course (and I am not talking about nyama choma or brochette here). Therefore, they reasoned that (I really like their reasoning sometimes, when they decide to reason) if they are to achieve their objective, they had to cure the disease, not the symptoms of Congo, as Muzee Kijana always likes to tell the international community. During the retreat, ngo they elected a committee that would follow up on the implementation of their plans aimed at finding the ‘cure’ to this disease. I am told that their plan of action was to go to police and manipulate them into executing their wishes. They told them that if they don’t immediately enact their proposal, no bird would go on any peacekeeping mission from police and the army. Simply put, this was a bird boycott in the offing. And who can stand the wrath of a bird scorned? The cops’ knees literally melted. You should have visited police stations that weekend! The cops had problems trying to control the overflowing inmates from turning the detention facilities of police stations into nightclubs. Well, they were not allowed to bring in alcohol of course, but how could the cops stop them from smuggling it in their bellies? Some of them had carried enough alcohol in their stomachs to last them two days. The cops were overwhelmed because this was unprecedented. They had never seen so many drunkos together in a police station. They definitely had not anticipated this because they were acting out of pressure from birds. At one of the biggest police stations in the city, the drunkos, once inside the police stations, imagined they were in a club or in a bar and in unison, they started to sing and dance. Since they could not call in riot police, the cops decided to stand and watch all night –some rare entertainment for them I am sure. In the morning there were two notable things around all police stations –they were stinking like a brewery from half a kilometre away and there was a crowd of birds gathered outside, flasks and different packages of breakfast in hand, pretending to be caring wives and girlfriends yet inside they were rejoicing triumphantly. Bird hunter was watching all this from a distance. brdhunter6@gmail.com
