The beer is mostly lager, comes in
huge bottles and can be strong. Local brew is “Nile,” and Nile Special can be
lethal. Wine, unfortunately, is expensive (min $7
per bottle) and usually very bad. At
the "Blankets and Wine" festival we went to on Sunday, we drank the
free beer.
In the real Ugandan bars, they don't understand the concept of mixed drinks; you get a bottle of alcohol and a bottle of coke. The local liquor is horrible gin called Waragi, which is mainly
moonshined, but can be bought too. In fact, when yellow fever had is big resurgence in 2011, it took a month for them to identify yellow fever because they only link between the dead was that they had all drank Waragi. They suspected alcohol poisoning.
If you want a real Ugandan drink in Kampala, you must go to the slums for Marwa--traditional warm millet beer. I mean warm, almost hot beer in a bucket with long bamboo
straws. Tastes a little like sour dirt. The men all sit around drinking while a woman periodically fills up the beer.
 |
| Marwa drinking with Ted, the awkward white guy |
When I first tried some, I swatted at and told "poison" because of the way I was holding the straw. I laughed and said that there was no way I could be poisoned just because I held the straw wrong. "No, no, no, I don't care about you, I care about me. You will poison me!" Apparently Marwa drinking is an old custom that was used to settle disputes, but holding the straw too close to your mouth means you could be slipping poison into the straw.
 |
| Tormenting children. Man in the blue hat is drinking Waragi |
Luckily our expat subculture has an answer to Marwa; we started our own brewing club. I'm an honorary member because I brought the brew kit from the US, but I'm much better at drinking than brewing. I must admit that one of our batches tasted only a little better than Marwa, and was about as sanitary since one inebriated "brewer" blew their nose into a tissue used to cover the brew.
I'll be sticking to Nile.
No comments:
Post a Comment