Cameroon's beer bottle 'currency'
Cameroonians are among the biggest alcohol consumers in Africa
Beer bottle caps are being used as currency in parts of Cameroon, which is in the grips of a promotion frenzy by rival breweries. Intense competition between beer companies has seen 20 million bottles given away since the start of the year.
The prizes, which are revealed beneath the bottle top, include mobile phones, luxury cars and of course more beer. With a beer costing $1, some punters are using their winning bottle tops to pay for taxi rides.
Big drinkers
"Virtually every consumer of beer in Cameroon has a chance of winning," says local journalist Martin Etonge in the capital, Yaounde. "Sometimes you go out just for a bottle and you find yourself coming back with four or six free bottles because of winning caps. "A bottle of beer costs about $1 and that's just over the cost of a township taxi drop." He says five beer caps would be enough to cover someone's taxi expenses for a whole day.
"Taxi drivers are also using the caps in their fishy deals with the traffic police," adds Mr Etonge. "So they can get off by giving one or two caps to the officers."
He says Cameroon traditionally has one of the highest levels of alcohol consumption in Africa and authorities have not expressed concern about the current trend.
"Nobody seems to be worried about the health implications," he says. "The government is saying nothing about it. But people are certainly drinking more than before.
but perhaps not this
Monks run short of 'world's best' beer
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ReligionNewsBlog.com - Item 11997 - Posted: 2005-08-15 19:08:25
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Monks at a Belgian abbey have run out of their famous beer after it was voted the best in the world.
The abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren in western Belgium is home to about 30 Cistercian and Trappist monks who lead a life of seclusion, prayer, manual labour and beer-brewing.
A survey of thousands of beer enthusiasts from 65 countries on the RateBeer website in June rated the Westvleteren 12 beer as the world's best. But the abbey only has a limited brewing capacity and was not able to cope with the beer's sudden popularity.
"Our shop is closed because all our beer has been sold out," said a message on the abbey's answering machine, which it calls the "beer phone".
The abbey has no intention of boosting its capacity to satisfy market demand. "We are not brewers, we are monks," the father abbot said on the abbey's website. "We brew beer to be able to afford being monks."
Monk Mark Bode told De Morgen newspaper: "Outsiders don't understand why we are not raising production but for us life in the abbey comes first, not the brewery."