Why are Kenyan men so big on betting?
A couple of weeks ago I was in talks for a consulting gig when they asked me what I considered a tie-breaking question: They wanted to know whether a) I can write under pressure and b) if I can write gambling scripts. My answer was, yes of course. But that was only to the first question. The other part? I said no.
Look, the money was really good—but I was the sanctimonious villain who would only pose for my mugshot atop the moral high ground. Hear me out: I come from a small village called Lutonyi and I have seen men the age of my grandfather still hoping to make it big. I used to watch football games with a certain reverence, looking forward to my team winning until the odds were raised. Now you just don’t enjoy a game, you have a stake in it, someone has placed a bet and there is something more to lose, other than a bruised ego. Football and gambling, or sports and gambling, is a dysfunctional marriage, like a divorced couple that is staying together for the children.
In theory, I don't have a problem with gambling. In theory, people can spend their money however they like. Of course, it's never just that. I have a big fat bone to pick with all the adverts. I wake up and hear gambling adverts. I am in a club washroom, and guess what, the urinal has a mirror advert of gambling. My YouTube is an eyesore of influencers pushing a betting Ad here, a stake there. Every app on my phone wants me to “BET NOW!” I find all these pretty offensive. They're incessant, representing the true spirit of gamblers, if at first you don’t succeed, do it again, but this time with a bigger amount, and maybe win the whole enchilada. As if persistent failure is the secret sauce.
Even as I write this, I am having an internal battle. I tend to understand where all this is coming from, in a country where jobs are hard to come by, and in a nation where everyone is dreaming about making it big. This, after all, is the land of let’s make a deal. When you dream, and you wake up, you never see the end of the dream, no? Nobody remembers how the dream ends. It is the dreaming that is important.
I try to make sense of gambling, especially men’s gambling and I see that it’s a mirage. It’s a fable, a fairy tale, like The Arabian Nights. Perhaps even a cautionary tale. Gambling represents the lore of the three wishes, where, as every kid knows, with the third wish you demand three more wishes. But as every genie knows, more wishes lead to more greed, more misery, more desires, more, more, more. The implications resonate in dark poetry.
I’d not call myself a gambler. I am too timid—some people might elect to use the word ‘coward’—and the only time I ever bet; I lost money. It was back on campus, Moi University, Liverpool was playing Manchester United. I despise both teams equally, but my friend, Hope, knew that my love for nyama choma could digest all things and we could bet some money and get some drinks with the winnings. So what did we do? He had Sh1,000. I had Sh1,000. He recommended we use my account since it was my first time and the betting odds would increase, what the punters call a ‘Welcome Bonus’. He may not have watched The Godfather but he had made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I had never really bet before, I’m bad at math, and the one skill I had as a writer—the ability to work under pressure—was negated by the fact that this seemed like easy money. And so, ready to be a capo, a made-man, he opened an account on my behalf and with the only Sh1,000 bob I had, we went all in. Go big, or go home, they say. I wasn’t about to go home, at least not while ‘thirsty’. You, like me then, are holding your breath. Manchester United did their thing—their thing is losing—and because they lost, I lost. I lost my money. Do you know the value of a thousand bob on campus? It could feed me for a whole semester and still pay my rent and have enough left over to pay tithe and gamble my chances with heaven. Okay, I exaggerate but you get the point. Still smarting from that loss, I have never bet again. It wasn’t for me. But I could have been that guy.
The last time I was at the Coast, I met this old guy, driving a TukTuk. He was my tour guide for the day but the scene that really stuck with me was when he stopped the TukTuk at a betting shop, asked me for Sh20 to buy a betting sheet, and proceeded to stake. He saw the questions in my eyes and told me it was too late for him, but “siku moja itajipa”(one day I will make it.) I hated his guts, but looking back, he was trying to teach me a lesson. Don’t end up like me, kijana. He’s hardly avant-garde.
I know of men in powder blue suits and behind the cocaine-white smile a deep addiction—gambling, with the bookmakers holding them by the balls.
I tend to think most of our many human vices ought to be legal. Prohibition has not proven to be particularly effective, that’s why we love stories about former lottery winners who end up getting divorced, or descending into madness, or squandering their entire fortune on dresses and weaves. We want to see them extract some fleeting sliver of human frailty, some friction; any friction.
Gambling, by nature, takes advantage of the misfortune of others. In order for one person to win, someone else—usually multiple others—must lose.
We bet believing we might just be the one who can beat the bookie, if not by judgment, then out of some strange pocket of luck that the universe reserves for its jesters. The downside to being good at sports is that you think you know sports better than most people and that means you can gamble on it successfully. “If this team is better than that team, and that team beat this team, then that team will surely beat all other teams.” Can you smell the naivete? Our love of football or support of a team convinces us that our gut feeling about a game is more reliable than it is, while our optimism tells us that, even though the chances of winning are stacked against us, fate flirts with faith and romances us into believing that we may have been chosen to upset the odds this time. Lo and behold, miracles only happen in the Bible and Hollywood. This is neither a sermon on the mount nor a movie.
Where I stay now, this money-spinning national love affair with betting owes much to the liberalisation of gambling and betting shops rising like hosannas across the estate. Kenya is responsible for the highest number of youth involved in gambling in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some bet up to 100 bob a day. Some, more. Much, much more. Our country is the third-largest gambling market in Africa, after Nigeria and South Africa. Young Kenyans already spend more money on gambling on average than youth in other African countries. But I don’t want to tell you things you already know. Here, money is Jesus.
Maybe I speak from a position of privilege but I have come to believe that earning a living is always better than winning a life. Shortcuts eventually cut you short. Despite what TikTok algorithms will have you believe, sweat remains the flavour of success. Despite the House no longer being a physical building but living in our phones, it still always wins. By writing this, I bet (hehe) no gambling company would want me as its influencer. Fair play. Because as every gambler knows, when you raise the stakes, you also raise the spoils.
BY DAILY NATION
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