Thursday, January 11, 2007

... of cash flow systems

the adage goes that money flows from the dumb to the smart. by city standards smart means a university degree, a masters, profesional qualifications and so on. and thats a very good thing; easy to follow and quite straight forward. well wait until you hear this; the center of the money with the highest gravity is the village brewer with little or no education. and they are so established that they even have depots these days. what amazes me is that the business is so estableshed that they can offer credit to whoever their patron is and remember all the credit to the last cent even though they seldom write it down. at the end of the month (really there is no end of month only end of brokeness) they get paid in full. in their stable is a wide variety of brew and distill. there is busaa which is cool and slow and taken by people who want to relax. i think busaa is held in higher regard. its also not as easy to find as cham. it has special brewers who are known to do it perfectly. also in the stable is muuna. this one is a very tasty version of busaa. u have to take a lot of muuna to get high. however its quite rare. muuna is my absolute favorite. the other is kong oseke. a very highly respected drink taken only by wazees or well oiled villagers. however the mother of them all is changaa. in these parts you get the real pure distil. very clear and lethal. when i was young the smallest measure of changaa was called 'tidit'. the name came from the sound of car ignition. the locals said its a starter. this time i found it being called 'pangla'. maybe because of the way you fall when you take it. many people who met me suggested that i was a very important son of the land who would make a good leader. for that matter i needed to buy them pangla. pangla is only 10 bob.

some teachers have to take pangla before they can teach. well i agree that with that many kids to teach you need to be out of your mind! in fact teachers play a very important role. even though they averagely earn 4,000 bob. (due to deductions etc), they are the owners of dukas, petrol stations, hardware shops, wholesale shops, and even supermarkets. even the pharmacies are owned by the teachers. teachers mainly start the money flow. when they get paid their 4K, they go to pay for the pangla they took on credit, then pay the milk deleveries, the househelp or herdsman, the butcher and also for the vegatables. in fact credit for teachers is very well establshed it even beats those credit cards in the big cities! problem is their money comes between 10th and 15th every month. so its very difficult to plan. i wonder why teachers get paid so late.

funny thing i bought petrol on a particular day from a shop! the lady even had regular, supar, diesel and even kerosene in jerry cans. guess how she measures one litre? using 1 litre coca cola bottle! in her shop, 1 litre of petrol went for 100/=.

but there are other better income initiatives eg bee keeping. a local NGO provides bee hives for 4K cash. however you can have one and pay in installments. this wil come to 6K. the honey is harvested after every 3 months. bee keeping is very lucrative. you sell the honey to that NGO, (most things are done by NGO in this part of the world there is very little govt presence in fact the only time you encounter govt is when they are raiding changaa and busaa bars for the mandatory 100 /= bribe! )

the bees do well as 750 ml bottle goes for 500 bob. most farmers get upwards of 10 litres per hive. some get 20 litres if their stories are true. other things you can sell are royal jelly, which goes for 5000 /=a kilo, propolis, bee wax etc. and did you know that bee sting cures athritis? i think bee keeping is very good. i wonder if Bankelele has compared this to trees yet.

3 comments:

  1. Wow! Pretty many posts this week and great detail too. Are you still in paid employment or you've taken leave.

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  2. problem is their money comes between 10th and 15th every month. so its very difficult to plan.

    ReplyDelete

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