Am I in Russia?

Last week, a local shopkeeper invited me over for lunch. It was good, a ton of rice served inside banana fronds and some sort of fish stew. Every little shop around here (I'll take a post a picture of one soon, they are fairly unique) sells what they call "kiroba" and what sane people call "evil bags of cheap liquor". These pouches contain what the Monarch vodka people rejected, if you can believe that (or at least that is what I gauged by tasting them). So this shopkeeper, having access to many kirobas, served us the world's cheapest vodka during the entire lunch. He poured it straight, drank it warm and unmixed. Thus, I was forced to do so as well. Remember, this was lunch time, one in the afternoon. We must've drank 3 or 4 of these vile things apiece. I feel like I went to bed in Tanzania and woke up in equatorial Russia.