A stop to taking gin.

While growing up as a teenager with my grandfather, I was staying with him in a farm settlement where I spent the weeknd helping him out in the farm and on Sunday evening I go to town for my education during the weekdays. I was about 16 years old then. There wass this new yam festival that all the farmers in the settlement join hand to establish to mark the coming of new yam. It was a celebration carried out annually and attended by many farmers and their families from neighbouring farm settlements and towns.

During this festival, there used to be a lot of drinks particularly alcoholic. There was a local gin called "Ogogoro". This drink was highly alcoholic with alcoholic contents of more than 40%. There was enough of this drink on this particular day that I am sharing the experience now. About five of us in the same age bracket came together to contribute money to have enough of fun and the top in the list of our activities that day was buying this "Ogogoro" to drink.

After finishing the celebration for the day we set out to return to the town in order to continue our schooling the following day which was Monday. Out of five of us, four people had bicycles - I was the only on one not having. As a result of this, I used to follow one of them, Ahmed. We both can ride bicycle and anyone of us could be the cyclist while the other sits behind. I decided to be the one to ride while he sat on the carrier. Barely a kilometre into the five kilometres journey, I had fallen like three times and each time I did, Ahmed would scold me for drinking to the point of being drunk - I was indeed drunk.

After falling the third time, we decided to exchange positions. Immediately we both sat on the bicycle, his attempt to start moving landed us in the bush with thorns. We had scratches on our arms and feets. At this stage, we both agreed to be pushing the bicycle one after the other till we get to town. That was how we pushed the bicycle till we arrived town. The other three friends pushed theirs also in like manner. We were all drunk.

About 100 metres from home, I decided to ride the bicycle alone while my friend trekked to meet me at home. Shortly after I started cycling, I hit an old woman and she fell. It took the intervention of other people resident there to revive this woman after fainting. Any attempt to plead with the old woman or to appreciate the people that helped, all they perceived from my mouth was smelling of alcohol. I was embarrassed when they kept advising me to stop riding bicycle while drunk.

The greatest of the embarrassments came when I arrived home and was having a running stomach. I had bathed earlier and tried sleeping but the serious urge to go to toilet woke me up. My house wasn't having a toilet, one needed to trek some metres to the outskirts of the town to make use of bush.

I went to outskirt immediately but wasn't able to move from the roadside before bending down. I was on it when a young girl greeted me while returning from farm with her parents. She was Saratu, a girl that I asked out on a romantic date earlier. I felt totally embarrassed. It was really shameful.