Nairobi's Little Prince
Perhaps it's only fitting that Nairobi's little prince was the son of a bureaucrat. He was named after the patron saint of England, although the massive following he had called out "Joh-gee!" in high pitched voices that hadn't broken as they moved from machine to machine in the Sarit Centre video game arcade.
He was an interesting sight: he stood no more than four and a half feet tall and he shuffled, favoring his left leg. Because he was crowded from all sides by people, both young and old, it took me a while to notice that his walk was the result of the weight of the coins in his right pocket - which threatened to pull his trousers to the floor without periodic adjustment.
It wasn't long before the patron-saint-prince of Nairobi ambled to the machine1 where I was lurking, and dropped in a few coins to play. All the while the high pitched voices were starting to make sense at this close proximity.
"Joh-gee! Joh-gee!" they said, "Ebu... swing foh me a beg2a!"
Periodically, after enough badgering, he would reach into his right trouser pocket, retrieve a fistful of coins, and push them in the direction of the request. Over and over he did this, running through the money in his pocket the way one might eat raisins: in handfuls and bunches at a time.
Sarit Centre was the site of our bus stop. For many years it was the shopping mall of the Nairobi suburbs but at this point it had been arguably eclipsed by newer shopping centers and malls coming up. When either waiting for the bus or parents, my siblings and I had become adept at occupying ourselves there. In the arcade my brother and I used a few techniques to stretch the 20 or so shillings2b (4 coins, 4 games) we'd have at the end of the day into a few games at the arcade. The best way to stretch out your coin was to play games against people, and to be better than them. They'd keep dropping in coin after coin in repeated efforts to beat you, and you'd laugh your way through a half-hour or more on a couple of coins. Another way to play if you had no money, as we often did not, was to lurk by a machine, waiting for the player to either request assistance or give up a game because they needed to leave. On that particular day I had a coin or two, and the little prince looked like the perfect sucker to keep me on the machine for a good hour.
I let him put in the first coin and play for a minute, but as he got close to losing I intervened by challenging him in the game. Standing next to him I was able to guess at his age, and although he seemed naturally small I placed him as no more than ten or eleven years old. He wasn't practiced at the game, and what he missed in experience he did not make up in tact or observation. His approach was simple: pound the machine, lose, and insert more money.
I began to imagine his father: a bwana mkubwa (big man), either the head or principal crony of a government agency. It wasn't uncharacteristic for these big men use various schemes to make money from the advantages of their position. For example, a common tact for a chief bureaucrat was to hold onto the salaries of his underlings for a few months (or until they rioted, whichever came first) - probably depositing them into an anonymous investment account and making some money off of the interest. The concept of public trust and responsibility are foreign; that which is the trust of the agency or organization is the personal holdings of its leader. The spoils of this fortune trickled down to personal businesses, vehicles, wives, and, of course, little princes like the little boy standing next to me, running through hundreds of shillings in an afternoon at the arcade. At that time a daily wage may have been four of those coins, two of which would purchase the only meal a worker would have at lunchtime, maziwa na half-loaf (milk and a half-loaf of bread).
Little George might have been the product of a second wife - his father had to be an older man to achieve the bwana mkubwa status, and frequently such a man would keep one wife in the village and another in the city. George's mother was probably young and beautiful, while his step-mother was old and weathered, like his father. The first marriage was for love3, but the second was the product of power and money.
After a while, thrashing "Joh-gee" ceased to be entertaining. Not knowing whether it would work, I leaned over and asked, "Ebu, can I have a beg?" Without speaking as he continued to bang on the machine with his left hand, he shoved a fistful of coins into my hands. An afterthought for him would last me a few weeks, and I didn't need maziwa.
1Art of Fighting was where the Street Fighter graduates went.
2a,bThe shilling is the currency in Kenya. Inflation has run off with itself since I was there, but at multi-sided five shilling coin was the "quarter" of the arcade. I'd never heard (and never heard again) a shilling referred to as a "beg" - most people would say "bob" the way a person in the US may say "bucks" or a person in the UK would say "quid." E.g. "I've got only 20 bob."
3An African definition here, not the Orlando Bloom stuff from Hollywood. I would probably link this to a man with a promising future and a woman who weds him not only for that promise but to avail him with that end. Children are a forgone conclusion.
3:45:15 PM 
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