When history is written about how cheaply destroyed bag liquor lives in the Mt. Kenya region, Keroche Breweries and Fai Amario Company Limited will always stand out like a sore thumb.
The two outfits based in Naivasha were the first major suppliers of cheap vodka, wine and spirits, and the Parliament was once told that their products left thousands of victims in the zombie state. The Kenya Bureau of Standards tried to fight them in court: they pushed back.
Before the cheap hard drinks ̵
1; mixed with ethanol or methanol – were launched, the lower market segment of sorghum and corn products such as Chibuku (manufactured by Udi Gecagas Umoja Breweries) and Kibuku (produced by Mathira politician Peter Kuguru).
Actually, Udi Gecaga was not the pioneer here. But whether he had inherited the franchise from Tiny Rowlands Lonhro – as it was once proposed in Parliament – is not clear. We only know that he ran the show together with his uncle Nyoike Njoroge and that Chibuku was a subsidiary of Heinrich’s Syndicate, which worked in Zambia.
Chibuku had a long history in southern Africa since the South African industrialist Max Heinrich founded the sorghum brewery in 1955 to service the Copperbelt Mines, and in five years he alone had nine breweries in Zambia. Also Chibuku was the most popular drink in Zambia (until then Northern Rhodesia). So the British buccaneer Tiny Rowland came on board and tried to bring the drink to Kenya and Malawi, but with little success. Udi Gecaga was his local manager.
These busaa -like drinks were advertised as Chakula Kinywaji and sold in limited outlets to East African Breweries Limited, who dominated the bottled beer market since their entry into the 1920s by supplanting their competitors.
Other brands introduced for the lower segment were Kugurus Sorghum Sake and Umojas Tembo, Nyuki and Nyati. Nyati was the first local product to be packaged in Tetra Rex, a gable packing that was then only used in Western countries for liquid products. It is used today by milk and juice producers.
While regular questioning of Chibuku’s hygienic storage – usually distributed in specialized minitankers and stored in barrels – never matched the lethargy of Keroche’s liqueur wines such as Vienna, Vertican and Cheers. The other was Sahara. It also could not compete with Fai Amario’s Pooler, Amarios Sherry, Medusa Moto Moto, Uhuru 2000, Kata Pingu, Mahewa and Cantata.
Fai, an extravagant and eccentric rogue, was a regular advertiser. His leash was: “Drink Amarios sherry and understand why birds fly” and she was the most popular on TV. He was also a thief and was charged with murder.
The Naivasha microbreweries – and their national imitators – had started with Fai Amario, a former Starehe Boys Center dropout whose love for biochemistry was epic. From his base in Naivasha, he had built a microbrewery and changed his name to Gabriel Njoroge. Overnight, he distilled cheap brands and earned enough money to promote radio and television and buy goodwill. Nobody would touch him in Naivasha, and his palace house was a restricted zone even for security officials.
In this lower segment, Tabitha Karanja decided to invest her money after her polygamous husband split his fortune among them the three women. As such, and as the High Court noted in 2013, Keroche Breweries does not belong to Karanja’s family – who claimed in court that some of his children left primary school – but to shareholders.
Both Tabitha and her husband told the High Court that they were not obliged to take care of adult children in a case in which the family disputes in their home were uncovered a fighting hardware store in the city of Naivasha. From a three-room microbrewery with only five employees, Tabitha has invested its money and confidence in a product that would later become the country’s second largest brewery. But at a price.
Both Keroche and the Fai Amario Company used ethanol and methanol to make a strong brew. If methanol is handled dangerously, it transforms into formaldehyde in the human body. Formaldehyde is the same substance in the embalming fluid – and it becomes formic acid, which is highly toxic to body cells. Those who continued to take these products in either small or large doses eventually died of cirrhosis. or were wasted socially. Some unscrupulous manufacturers – and looking for potency – did not remove methanol, and the drinks became toxic.
That these Naivasha microbreweries and their imitators today, including London Distillers, managed to throw the land back into the 1860s is now known and documented.
Those who read history recall the words of British explorer John Hanning Speke, who became the first European to reach Lake Victoria on 3 August 1858. One of the things he discovered on his trip East Africa was – along with Richard Burton – the sobriety of the locals.
He wrote about men: “If the African does not fight for the property of others, he content himself with drinking, singing and dancing like a baboon. “
Of course, the aspect” baboon “was an insult. For his part, Burton wrote about the excesses he noted: “The men are idle and dejected and spend their days in unmitigated scarcity and drunkenness. After noon, it would be difficult throughout the country to find a chieftain without the thick, fiery voice, eyes and eccentric manners proving that he is either drinking or drunk. “
Although all this was severely judged, everyone agreed that drinking was only for older men and” drunkenness was not common among young men “and” was barely observed “among women.
While the Native Liquor Ordnance was introduced with the colony’s arrival in 1921, which set the drinking hours and prohibited drinking for breakfast, these regulations were ignored in the late 1990s as unregulated moonshine outfits were registered. At the beginning of 2000, the country was teeming with cheap hard drinks that changed the drinking habits of young people in the country.
In 2002, Safari Whiskey, Safari Dry Gin and Safari Vodka launched another major brand, London Distillers, Safari Cane and Safari Cocktail Rum. It belonged to the Asian tycoon Mohan Galot in a large empire, also called Mohan Meakin belonged. Their bags and those of Keroche and Fai dominated rural Kenya, so that Parliament demanded control of these bags, which cost Sh10.
These bags also became popular with schoolchildren and were sold in unregulated locations. None of the brewers took care of that, and if they were challenged they would argue that they were being fought by Kenya Breweries, who also tried to enter the market with products like Kenbrew and Senator Keg.
In the Mt. Kenya region, where the dumping of cheap beers was notorious, the provincial government closed 10 Keroche depots in 2003 and the company was brought to trial by the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs), which demanded that Keroche’s production from wines from Viena, Vertican, Sahara and Sheer. 19659005] Kebs, the parliament was informed by Trade Minister Mukhisa Kituyi, had tested eight Keroche products and six passed the quality test.
“Keroche Industries Limited decided to mislead the public by claiming that Kebs had released its drinks for public consumption. “Said Dr. Kituyi.
In 2004, MPs from central Kenya accused the brewer of distributing toxic drinks. “You will find that people who take these drinks get sick and their eyes turn yellow … What is the government doing against big industries like Keroche who make these drinks?” Asked Kariuki Muiruri, MP of Gatundu North.
Another battle that confronted Keroche was taxation for liqueur wines. While taxes imposed by Treasury Secretary Amos Kimunya in 2007 wiped some of the low-priced products off the shelves, Keroche returned with the mainstream Summit beer – pouring its other products into the mainstream.
While Keroche has survived so far, Fai Amario does not.
During his funeral on a late afternoon in May 2010, mourners and Boda Boda riders made a lap of honor in the town of Naivasha, as Frank Sinatra’s song “My Way”. was played for everyone and everyone.
In the last corner, his business acumen had been overshadowed by criminal convictions ranging from murder, to stolen goods, to carjacking.
Fai was first arrested on suspicion of killing his estranged wife Sarah Wanjiru, who was missing in 1996, and police suspected she was buried in Amaro’s estate. One morning they arrived with earthmoving machines, dug up the terrain, and emptied the septic tanks. There was nothing but stolen motor vehicle parts.
He was also suspected of killing Gitau Karago, a deputy manager at Fai Amarios Depot, whose body was hammered in the head with 6-inch nails. Karago had called Amario on December 26, 1995 and told him that Sh212,000 had been missing. Fai called the Murang depot manager, Makimei Njoroge, and demanded his money. Karago was found dead one week after his release in Naivasha and an unconscious Njoroge by his side.
That’s how the industry was run. Amario had apparently lied to the police that Karago was killed by hyenas on his way home in the area of Mirera in Naivasha.
While Amario was charged with murder in January 1996, the state dropped the indictment five months later. Why? Nobody knows.
Later he was accused of robbing businessman Mulraj Kanji Patel of his Toyota Land Cruiser and other 2.8 million Sh personal items and being head of a Naivasha-based car theft syndicate. He was sentenced to nine years in Kamiti Prison.
With all the drama that followed, his winery collapsed and later died.
But that’s how Naivasha became a paradise for moonshine brewers. And, given the Kenya Revenue Authority’s demand for tax arrears from Keroche, we did not seem to hear from this brewer for the last time – the maker of the “True Kenyan Summit Camp”. A long way from the days when they sold sachets.
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