Bingo's Run (2 page)

Wolf needed me. I ran fast through the narrow sand-and-rock paths to his hut. Wolf lived in a part of Kibera called Moc. It was obvious that a boss lived there; his hut was ten times bigger than anyone else's place. The base was concrete block, and there were wooden walls and a mabati roof.
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Inside, the floor was covered with worn carpets. Down the middle of the room was the long cutters' table. At the far end of the hut was Wolf's throne, a gold chair made of wood, with blue fabric. The chair looked as if it had been kicked about by time. I ran up to it. “Yes, Wolf Boss Sa,” I said. I panted dog style, dripping with sweat.

Wolf was a big man, more than six feet tall. When he moved, the space he left behind carried his shadow. He was wide and strong, though his body was not fat. His face was square, with a short beard stuck on his chin. A good runner watches a man's eyes. They are the first part to move when a man wants to scam or strike. Eyes betray a man. His eyes say “confusion,” “hunger,” or “anger,” even when the man wants you to hear nothing. But
Wolf's eyebrows were thick. They jutted out and hid most of what his eyes might give away. His nose was large, and flat like a spoon. His braided hair hung down to his neck, clean and oiled, so that it looked like worms. He wore shoes, brown trousers, and a black shirt. Wolf had plenty of money, and did not need to live in Kibera. But Kibera was safe and soaked in women. Wolf had made lots of children, though none called him Daddy.

Wolf loved his work and was good at it. I ran for him at least two times a day, and there were fifty more like me. Fifty runners delivering twice a day, at about 500 shillings a run, is 50,000 shillings a day and 350,000 a week. I am good at numbers; it is part of my job. I learned to count from my father, a deadbeat gambler. I do not know how much money Wolf kept for himself and how much went to Boss Jonni, but a lot of money went around. I knew this because I was one of the runners who ran the weekly delivery of money back to Boss Jonni.

I loved Boss Jonni runs, first, because it meant that I had nothing else to do that day, and second, because Wolf paid two hundred shillings for the run. The trouble was that Boss Jonni runs were not always on the same day or at the same time, so I could not guess when to turn up to catch one. The other runners were in the same position. We competed fiercely for Boss Jonni runs, but we never took from one another. That is Commandment No. 3: The stolen run is death.

Wolf sat on his dark blue throne smoking. In front of him was the long wooden cutting table. Seated at the table, which could hold twelve, were two cutters. They sat, bent over the table on rusted metal foldup chairs, cutting blocks of white. One of them smoked a cigarette that was balanced on a tin ashtray.

Wolf ran his left hand down his oiled worm hair. “Meejit, take four bags to the Intercont,” he ordered. “Roja waitin' there for ya. When he give ya tha monay, give him fifty, ya.” “Right, Wolf Sa,”
I said. I went to the table. The cutter dragged on his cigarette and, without looking up, handed me four bags of white. I slid them down my shorts and ran. Roja was just a hotel boy. I never lipped money from the buyers (Commandment No. 4), but lipping everyone else was another matter, Roja included.

When I worked, I worked (Commandment No. 7). After I left Wolf's hut, I headed north. I ran out of the slum and onto the street. The midday heat was over but the street had its own heat, hotter than the sand paths of Kibera. The street was potholes joined by a spiderweb of tarmac. The tarmac burned my feet and made me run faster. I ran past a clinic, two brothels, the market, a church, and the old yellow bus full of condoms. A charity had given the bus to a nun for her stop-AIDS campaign, but since the nun could not drive and the charity did not give her money for petrol, the yellow bus became storage for boxes of condoms. No one used rubber; the nun could not even sell the condoms. She, the bus, and her condoms gathered Nairobi dust.

I ran up the hill past the Maasai Market—trinkets that end up at the feet of Krazi Hari. It took me an hour to get to the Intercontinental. Roja waited next to the small traffic island outside the hotel, wearing the Intercont green hotel-boy jacket. He was tall and young and looked like a piece of rope. He spotted me from halfway up the street and waved me in. He shouted, “Hurry, boy. I need to get home.”

I slowed down and watched him get pissed. When I reached him, I smiled big. “Jambo, Roja maan. How's ya doing, ya?” I reached into my shorts and gave him the four bags.

“Wait here,” he said sharply. He put the bags in his pocket and ran into the hotel.

I sat on the low brick wall and watched the hotel guests. Safari tourists walked about in their tan clothes and “rob-me-I'z-a-tourist”
hats. White and black businessmen got in and got out of white and black taxis. I knew some of the hookers floating around; they were special for this hotel and prettier than average. I watched a white family with three clean children—two boys, one girl—waiting in front of the hotel doors. The children kicked a rock between them. The street outside the hotel filled with people coming from businesses and going to the bus station. I knew that Roja would not be long.

Roja hustled out after about fifteen minutes. “Here,” he said, and handed me eight clean hundred-shilling notes from the whitehead.

“Ta,” I said. “Could ya get me water, ya?”

Roja's look was filled with anger. I smiled. He knew I had money for him (to be split, I guessed, with the manager). He ran into the hotel with long strides and came back minutes later with a crumpled plastic bottle half full of water. I knew he had spit in it, but water is water and work is work. I gave him ten shillings, kept forty, and headed home.

I got back to Kibera a few hours later, when the sun was almost down. Wolf lay across his throne as if he was its hooker. I handed him the money. He counted it and pushed it into a green bag by his right hand. A woman lay on the floor sleeping. The cutters had disappeared. Wolf stroked his hair. “Meejit, I'z anotha run. Emergency.”

I knew better than to say anything except “Thank you, Wolf Boss Sa.”

“Take two bags to tha artis', ya,” Wolf said.

Wolf flicked his left hand at the cutting table. In the middle was a mound of white-filled plastic bags. There were runners who palmed extra bags at moments like this, but their fate was the garbage mound behind the East Wall. I knew better; I took two bags as I was told.

Wolf said, “Meejit, here's twenty, ya.” He threw two notes in my direction and they fell like leaves.

“Wolf Sa. Thank you, Boss Sa.”

Wolf flicked his hand again. It was the command to leave.

I headed out of the slum. Thomas Hunsa, the artist, lived in Hastings.

I was the only runner Thomas Hunsa let come to him. White had eaten most of Hunsa's brain; it was like the road out to Hastings: more potholes than tarmac. Hunsa never feared me, perhaps because I was a small man and he had a small brain. Hunsa liked to be called Masta.

The run to Hastings takes two hours. I chose to bus there even though it took some of the twenty shillings Wolf had given me; I was already forty ahead for the day. Whenever I took the bus, I took Slo-George with me. He was too stupid for Hunsa to fear, just as I was too small. He would sit outside Hunsa's house and wait in the street until I was done. Then the two of us drank beer at the drink hut by the bus stop. That night, I looked for Slo-George but did not find him. I went to the bus stop alone.

The buses in Nairobi, called matatus, are shelled-out minivans that are supposed to hold twelve people but hold twenty-five when the roof is used. Most do not have doors. In the day, you know a matatu is arriving by the music thud that comes out of its speakers. The noise also warns people crossing the street, since I
have never ridden a matatu with brakes. The owners paint the outside of their matatus, mostly purple and black. Matatu decorations range from church names to cigarette adverts to messages like “Chariot of Death,” “Wheels to Hell,” and “Flyin' Frenzi.” In the slum, people paint on almost anything. For example, Maloe painted his brother Mason on the wall of his shack to advertise his hairdressing “saylong,” as he calls it. The wall of his salon is made from cardboard and will disappear with rain or a decent riot. Lots of people like to paint, just as Dog likes to kill, Wolf likes to boss, Slo-George likes to eat, and I like to run.

The matatu to Hastings, the 16B, was purple-and-gold and called Fearlis. It was almost empty, because most workers were already home. There was space to think as the bus thudded west along Ngong. A girl sat across from me, younger than me but a head higher, in dirty jeans and a T-shirt. In the rows in front were an old woman with a blank look on her face and a couple of young men laughing together. The driver, young and drunk, was bouncing to the music. I swung across to the girl and sat next to her. “Jambo. You'z going to Hastin's?” I said.

Because I am a growth retard, girls always talk to me, often out of pity. It is good; it gets me the opening. The girl smiled at me, unsure. I used the movement of the matatu to push against her. I smiled back. “I'z goin' out drinkin' lata, ya. You want to come for beer?” Her eyebrows got closer. She was confused. I put my hand on her thigh. Heat rose in her face. “Come on, ya,” I shouted over the music. “We have a good time.” She did not trust me a bit. She sensed that I was not a ten-year-old.

The girl was light-skinned and had a high forehead, like a billboard. Her teeth were crooked. Her eyes were even, large, and dark. Her ears were small but her lips were thick. Her breasts were not bad. In a break between music tracks, she said, “I can na' go. Motha tell me, be back for tea.”

Her voice was not as strong as her words. I said, “What's ya name?”

“Deborah,” she said.

“So, Deb-or-ah.” I stretched out her name and stroked her thigh a few times. “You'z a mama's girl? You alwaze do az Mama say, like a little girl, ya. How old ya, anyway?”

She looked down at her feet—she had on shoes. Her eyelashes were long. She said, “Fifteen.” If she was fifteen, I was six feet.

“Well,” I said, “for fifteen, you sure is a mama's girl.”

She glared at me. “No! I do what I want.”

I laughed and waited for her to think. I said, “So come with me and drink, ya?” I knew her answer before she did.

The matatu music was loud.

“Okay,” she said to the floor. I pretended not to hear her because of the music. I made her say it again.

We got off the bus at the far end of Hastings, and I told Deborah I had business first. She looked at me. “What business?”

I said, “I'z an art deala.”

I took her hand and we went to the house of Thomas Hunsa.

Thomas Hunsa's house was about ten minutes from the bus stop at Salome Road. It was upscale, built from concrete block, the third house in a row of three blockhouses that stood out from the wooden shacks. It was obvious which one was Hunsa's; it had pictures coming out of every hole and cans of paint scattered about. As usual, there were children sitting around the outside of his house. They painted with Hunsa's thrown-away paint. Some painted pieces of wood; others painted on bits of cardboard. Most used pieces of rags or sticks instead of brushes. Some used their fingers. The children would paint anything. Once when I came out of Hunsa's house, Slo-George had fallen asleep and two children had painted on him.

Hung over the door was a sign painted on a scrap of wood:

This was how he paid for his white.

I did not knock—I pushed past pictures to get in. Deborah followed behind me.

Thomas Hunsa stood in the middle of the crowded room working on a painting. When he saw me, a giant grin exploded on his face. “Jambo, Meejit. What you'z have for me?”

Hunsa had on an open brown robe. His chest was bare and he wore brown paint-smeared trousers cut above the knee. The robe was marked with pigment and dirt, and the house smelled of the same. A rope cord hung from his hips. He held a bone-handled brush in one hand, a reefer in the other. Apart from a mattress on the floor against the far wall, a low faded orange armchair, a small wooden table with paint jars, and Thomas Hunsa, the room was filled with paintings. At least a hundred of them were crammed in there with him. They leaned against the walls and the furniture, the piles reaching all the way up to the mabati roof. Paintings stuck out of both windows.

“What is ya workin' on, Masta?” I said.

“None of ya's business,” Hunsa said.

Deborah shuffled in the doorway. She had to wait; I was working.

I looked at the painting on the stand in front of him: a giant turtle, its arms stretched out like Jesus. The turtle was so yellow that it looked electric. Behind it was a pale purple sun. I knew it was a man turtle, because it had a thick bright-red bhunna that dropped right to the bottom of the picture. The bhunna's head was the face of a Kalenjin girl. Shapes and animals—brown, light green, and orange—came out of the turtle's body. I looked close.
I rubbed my eyes. It was true: the turtle breathed slowly in and out. It lived in the Master's art.

But the turtle picture was like a person; not one bit of it was finished. The yellow shell had patches of white showing through. The purple sun had smudges of brown lines. The Kalenjin girl had no expression, as if she didn't care that she was stuck at the end of a turtle's bhunna.

“Runna, you have my bags?” Thomas Hunsa said. His voice snapped me back to the real world. The paint and piss fumes must have got me drunk.

Hunsa balanced the brush on the painting stand, pushed his hand into a pocket of his gown and handed me money. The notes were smudged with dirt and paint. They smelled of him. I counted them and gave him the two bags.