Every waking day in Kenya, hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of youths place a bet on the likely outcome of a football match played far away in Europe or elsewhere in the world.
This has spawned a culture where every time a big match is being played in Europe, hordes of youths take positions at social joints all over Nairobi and other Kenyan towns, armed with smart phones.
They keep checking the ever-shifting odds on their phones based on what is happening on the big screens. When the final whistle is blown, it is hard to tell whether the thunderous uproar or the forlorn looks are as a result of how a favourite team fared or whether one has just won or lost money in a bet.
As the betting culture catches on in the country, further riveting the youth’s love for football, many have lost cash to habitual betting, while a few lucky peasants have won millions in jackpots that changed their lives forever.
And as debate rages on the excesses of the betting craze among the youth vis a vis the economic benefits of the industry to the country, Kinyanjui Kombani, ‘the banker who writes’ has added a creative angle to the conversation.
In a new novel titled ‘Of Pawns and Players’, published by Oxford University Press (EA), Kinyanjui has woven a rib-cracking story about a man called Toma, code-name Offalman, who is announced as the winner of a Sh300 million jackpot.
Big-money drama
Toma, whose full name is Thomas Karamu, gets caught up in the big-money drama courtesy of a beautiful girl called Aria. She has fallen madly in love with the mutura – African sausage (grilled tripe) – Toma sells for a living.
Aria hails from an affluent family and oozes cash, meaning her frequent visits to Toma’s stuffed intestine’s stand at the intersection of Market and Dago streets has enriched him (Toma) somewhat.
Drama starts unfolding when Aria hires Toma to pose as her fiancé at an upcoming family event. Aria reckons that buying Toma a tuxedo and flaunting him as a potential husband will silence her numerous aunties, who, at the big event, engage Toma on everything from how many children he thinks a family should have to “How well do you know our Aria?”
One man is not fooled by the charade, though – Aria’s Dad. An industrialist tycoon who has interests in virtually every sector of the economy, Aria’s father, Wallace Walaki, threatens to see Toma rot in prison for lying that he is a businessman in the ‘commodities’ sub-sector. He has Toma arrested on trumped-up charges.
Toma is staring at a long prison sentence when a top lawyer comes to the remand where the offal seller is being held. The lawyer convinces him to accept to play a role in a fraud where he (Toma) would be announced as the winner of the Sh300 million jackpot. He would, however, have to return the money to the sender.
Toma and Aria, however, have other ideas on what to do after receiving the money. It is these crazy ideas that see the story turn into a suspenseful thriller whose details we can’t give here without milking dry Kinyanjui’s work of literary art.
The story, told in the first-person narrative voice by Toma, opens when a sleek Mercedes Benz pulls up next to Toma’s Mutura stand and sinewy bodyguards drag him away amid blows and kicks. He is taken to Aria’s father, Mr Walaki, who wants to know why the intestines seller used false pretences to get close to the tycoon’s daughter.
Through flashbacks and clever back-and-forth plot development, Kombani manages to keep us wondering why well-dressed bodyguards are accosting a seemingly harmless tripe seller, while at the same time gradually letting us see what occasioned this assault.
The novel is yet another huge step towards African fiction that explores contemporary themes. For long, works of fiction in Africa have tended to focus on the struggle for freedom in the 40s to 70s, just like American fiction of up to 10 years ago dwelt on cold-war themes and race relations.
This, perhaps, is because for the great writers of back in the day, these were the biggest issues and realities of their time. And while those themes are relevant to date, it is great thing that young writers like Kinyanjui Kombani are weaving fiction around (other) realities of their time, too.
Another outstanding feature of this novel is its comical streak. Kinyanjui uses humour to satirise the hypocrisy of ‘slay queens and kings’ who pretend to avoid Toma’s mutura like the plague when people are watching but buy huge pieces of it when they look right, left, and right again and are satisfied no one is watching.
The absurdity that rules the characters’ lives also hints at the petty corruption that rules town life in Kenya. For instance, the spot where Toma prepares Mutura is a disputed land. Traders next to him hang on by bribing county officers.
The spot next to Toma’s mutura stand was once occupied by a key-cutter named Edu, who everyone thought was physically challenged because he used a wheelchair. Until the dreaded flying squad officers came calling and Edu shot out of the wheelchair and ran like a bat out of hell. The keys he made were being used to rob houses in nearby estates.
Then there is Elisha, a cobbler who is so hooked on betting he has created a secret “well” where he will keep his money when he hits the jackpot. Elisha has this habit of pretending to be working on a shoe only to toss it away and return to betting when the client leaves.
“My day will come. I will have my day,” Elisha wills himself every time he loses a bet. To which Toma retorts: “At this rate, only the betting company is having its day.”
An indefatigable anti-piracy crusader, Kombani was into theatre and creative writing right from his college days at Kenyatta University.
Carcasses, a play he wrote for Born Free Foundation’s Bush Meat Trade Awareness project back then, was staged across the country and later adapted for the screens under the title ‘Mizoga’, which was watched in Africa, Europe and the US, besides being shown to more than 60,000 rural Kenyans.
Study texts
His first novel, The Last Villains of Molo (2012), explores the curse of ethnic violence in Kenya and Africa. His other books include Finding Colombia( 2018), The Bike Thief (2018), Imani and the Missing Mace (2017), Den of Inequities (2014), Lost but Found (2012), Wangari Maathai: Mother of Trees(2007) and We can Be Friends (2007). He has co-authored Toto Tales/Fabulous Four Series (2016) and Intersections of Literature (2015), an essay collection.
The Last Villains of Molo and Den of Inequities have been study texts in several Kenyan universities.
Last year, Kinyanjui’s Finding Colombia won the CODE Burt Award for African Young Adult Literature. His other entries, Do or Do and Eve’s Invention, saw him named a national finalist for the same award.
