By Ernest Bazanye

HERE is an amusing story that you can memorise and share with your co-workers during those moments when you feel you need a boost in popularity. It is about a man named Fred.

Fred looked at his newspaper on Monday and was distressed to read that bars in the country were to close at 10:00pm. “Oh no!” he exclaimed. “But Bible study ends at nine! I will only have one hour!”

Feel free to email and forward it around as well. It is that kind of joke.
And that mediocre attempt at humour is pretty much the only thing approaching good that I see coming out of this ludicrous idea that bars should be shut at 10:00pm by the Government.

Otherwise the whole thing stinks. Like a towering landfill. It stinks, thus because it is made up of so many different rotten things.

For starters, it is not going to work. The minister does not know us and how capable we are when we are motivated. I, myself, am at most a casual drinker; I am not one of the hardcore devotees out there, but even I will not be dissuaded by a little law.

You can close bars at noon if you want. We shall still drink as late as we want.
You see, you do not need a bar to drink. Pretty much all you need is a mouth and alcohol.

So unless they are going to strengthen the law and insist that all mouths must be closed at 10:00pm, this is just more wee-wee in the wind because we have been known to congregate for a pint in parking lots, street-sides, at family gatherings and even in schools.

Secondly, where does this Government get the nerve? I sputter and gasp. If you do not like the fact that I drink, then I do not think you will like the gesture I am executing with my finger right now, either.

Yes, some people drink heavily and turn into nuisances because they sing too loudly and urinate in special hire taxicabs, but why should me and my relatively decent boys give up our freedoms because of one loser who cannot hold his bladder?

And even if we were not being decent, like that time when guys ended up in oba Mukono at 3:00am with chicks from Kigali and could not remember their names.

Really, unless these women were the wives of the Government, then this episode, unfortunately, falls outside the parameters that are defined in the mudaala of the Government.

The issue of mudaala (is key here. One must mind one’s mudaala and not another’s. In plain English, you need to know what aspects of life are of your concern and which are none of your business.

To illustrate, I think it is deplorable for a man to wear a full suit in the baking sun, especially if the said suit cost more than sh1m, and he is wearing it to talk to a group of people who live on or below the poverty line.

It is everything from tasteless to cruel, but the Government does it all the time. You do not hear me going around banning the Government’s Armani suits, do you?

Because political fashion is not within my mudaala. Now, if people who drink commit crimes, then the government must swoop in with haste, arrest and prosecute them.

You must grab the rapist, the assaulter, the drunk driver and the man who attempts sedition while under the influence, but as long as no crime has been committed, then really, leave us the hell alone!

Mbu closing bars at 10:00pm. What next? Are the police coming to our homes to write down the names of noise makers?