At Jokers’ Casino I am allowed complimentary grilled-cheese for a 2000 shilling stake any given night. A Fanta in glass was certainly on the table for a day’s bets, but only as a matter of inclination; that’s freebie, next to what my friend the particular Indian embellishes—in face moldered with hair combed earnest, methodically smooth by tufts away from the peak of his face—“I win six hundred, every day, it is enough, not to be greedy.”
And there’s 40 shillings, he loses on “even chances”, a zone only whites play—‘color?’ ‘you do not play inside?’—according to the other sharks.
We are all textured, any rate, from the atmosphere of ready commerce: slow gains tingling into halting losses of lavender. The Indian is just one man’s take on an atmosphere which for he provides at least a novelty or an accrued residue swap for travel attainment of indoor smoking, soul profit. My friend’s texture reads only hope for a break even line or, rather, a reflection; the thousands he has neither lost nor gained but borrowed rotogravured there near the chin. It’s hard to deal with sometimes but at least I have a sense of, um, penultimate, gain from my free sandwich.
The entrance is usually guarded by those heavily armed men, paramilitary or the police: like an AK matched with a heavy smg for the forage cap cop—the Austrian build parts car FALs could not make it. I was dropping $200 and I think it was more because of my compulsivity than because of the high stake; but I had been seen. The man there gave me a wary look at an acute in the corner of my periphery which I will not forget, like I was going-all-out. Surely I had not been so irresponsible.
It’s all quite low, right off the street. Sometimes there are guards even at the alleyway side-door off of one of the ubiquitous ‘walks’ of Eastern Africa (like, ‘Aga Khan Walk’) and yes there is a mild stir as the entrance is performed off the grilled porch to the alley, eyes pointing this way and that way. A Franco-phone bellowed deep on the offbeat between the call to attention (bingo) and the “num-baar esh” (pidgin, she doubles as cashier) for the Bingo; this has been borrowed from another establishment across town.
The Intercontinental Hotel is the capitol of Nairobi. At the rotary near there is a magnificent shin-deep hedge overlaid in wire. The direct entry is somehow sealed to the outside in perfect mirror-coated glass; this actually concerns an assumed passage from the adjacent parking garage.
So to make an entrance is a prolongued to-do of causeways and sharp turns. But before you sing ‘copa-cabanna’—there is glitz to the security screen at the door, all quite trans national as you’ll be passing Embassy UAE ledged to a blast wall on your right anyway, nothing can prepare for the dark carpeting. You tread, and turn or proceed straight ahead to the cage.
The lighting. Here I learned to lose gracefully. A poker game at $100 buy-in. Asking, “Yizz-rye-ul?” to a businessman in shirtsleeves next to me made it worth it. “Someone teach this guy how to play”, he responded. There are lanterns and smeary paintings. The cashier is right in the corner. The ceilings are quite tall but for the lanterns. It is a more serious place. There are more games on a raised platform at one end of the room.
Re-buy. You have the option with what is not quite the last hundred you have on hand. (Earlier: a Scandinavian reaches his set ‘limit’.) They whisper at you when you lose hopefully. A Benglai is “chasing money.” He asks me whether I agree with the deportation of some famous terrorist or other; see, he also sallies in conversation, cater-corner to an indigenous businessman who refers to Bashir as “the Field Marshall.”
The Bengali is who led me to theorize that (regarding his neighbor of large affairs) if you are fat there then it is as a sign of position; less, a sign of money. It is more serious, but people just mostly want there to be an ample camaraderie over the stakes.
Go not to Parma, the recessed casino of Nairobi, with a revolving automatic door. The video Roulette there is a sham; but the foodservice (raised platform again) does not leave all the much to be desired.
What’s the entry for Bingo?
The video Roulette takes a minimum of one-thousand shillings for outside. I won ksh. 1,500. A preparation for the Intercontinental which I mentioned previously.
I must say that I think I want nothing to do with the establishments of Mombasa.
The bingo-player is issued a ticket for lunch, which is very European with drinking chocolate at the end. It’s served as a buffet and this proceeds while the numbers are beginning to get pulled. You can see the numbers in their cage but the bingo announcer is invisible. The prize is a variant of how many people enter the bingo.
Another of their Casinos is very high off the ground and it does nothing but that chance is thwarted at familiar games by (again) a simple misinterpretation of bets—the wheel mayn’t be aligned properly. It is a lucky thing to just get out of there; you look back up at the edifice with your winnings in hand.
But there is nothing like Jokers’.
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© Isaac Iselin ‘13.
