For every service in the village, there is always one person who is distinguished for delivering it. When it came to brewing, one man was as popular as a fighting bull. His name was Kaigutha. The man had built his house some distance away from everyone else. He lived alone. Unlike most of the people who lived by themselves, he did not have much to say to others. Neither did he talk to himself. In a place where the art of talking long and ambiguously is highly valued, the brewer was viewed as eccentric. However, this was accepted as a mark of his brilliance. Doesn’t genius go well with bizarre?

For three consecutive days in every week, many people visited his homestead. In those three days, the broth would be ‘cooked’ ready for drinking. In the other days of the week, Kaigutha concocted whatever potions he used to prepare the magic brew that made grown men crawl on their bellies like snakes.

To get to Kaigutha’s home, you would need to cross the raging Mathioya River. The bridge you used consisted of a single log placed across a wide channel bubbling with furious water. A customer desperately needed balance coming from a drinking spree, as much as he needed it getting there. It was for that reason that Kaigutha administered his brew with the strict eye of a pharmacist. He only needed look at a customer once for him to issue a prescription. Two mugs for those in the category referred to in vernacular as ‘getting high on warm milk’ and four mugs to those in the category of ‘entering a honey eating contest with bees.’ Surprisingly, Kaigutha never went wrong in his judgment.

Being a quiet man, he did not get into unnecessary arguments with those who claimed they could drink more that he judged they could handle. For such folks, he would measure out the amount of alcohol they demanded and then ask them to go across the bridge and drink from there. The reason is because he was sure that once they drank above what he had prescribed, they would never be able to walk across the log. In fact, those braggarts never wandered far from the spot where they settled down to drink.

One of the peculiar ways of Kaigutha’s traditional brew was that it did not hit you immediately. It would take a while between the time it was consumed and the time drunkenness set in. Those who consumed it claimed that they could literally feel the alcoholic beverage ripening in their stomachs like a bunch of bananas. One of the tasks that Kaigutha took seriously was making sure that each drunk crossed the bridge before the alcohol stung. Woe unto the quiet brewer if the high caught up, and the undesirable character ended up bothering his peace all night.

In fact, not everyone would be sure of where they were likely to end up if the drunkenness set in while in transit. Many people had found themselves miles away from home. Others had been found in their underwear by the roadside with their clothes neatly folded and place next to an imaginary bed. One man slept in the rain across a drainage channel and created a huge dam that beavers would envy. Another was found in the garden a few days later with a colony of termites having built a mammoth anthill over his prostrate body. You can then see why it was crucial to avoid the embarrassment of being known as one who could not hold his traditional brew.

Every seasoned drinker knew of the two sure ways that guaranteed that a person got home after a dinking binge. The first was to take the drink as if participating in a relay race. Bottoms up the first mug…then the second…and the third…then run home. Your haste ensured that you did not get caught up mid way. For those who lingered, it was necessary for a friend to employ the second method while they were still in the initial stages of drunkardness. The Good Samaritan would quickly do some calculations to estimate the direction of the drunkard’s home. He would then point the inebriated fellow in that direction and then give him a gentle push on the back. Incredibly, the drunkard would stagger in a straight line through hell and high water and finally came to a stop as soon as his forehead bumped onto the front door of his house. And as if on queue, he would promptly black out in a drunken stupor. If the forehead knock did not, the roof-blowing snore would wake up everyone in the house. For three days every week, the irritable inhabitants of the house would drag the drunkard inside the house on humanitarian grounds, courtesy of Kaigutha’s brew.

And for that, praises of the quiet brewer’s magic concoction spread like bush fire, making him both popular as well as infamous across many ridges.