My home did not have a roof, and so Kibera’s sun woke me. The giant red ball crawled up the sky like a lazy spider. I still had money in my pocket, and so Slo-George and I walked to the market to get food. “Georgi, what ya do las’ night?” I asked him.
Grunt!
I wondered why I even bothered talking to him. His replies were only grunts or silence. I said, “Afta food, ya wan’ a throw rocks at Krazi Hari?” It was our standard morning activity.
I bought Maandazi, coffee, and five mangoes. We sat in the open area and watched children play football with a rusted can. An old bent blind man hobbled over to us balanced on a stick. He was the beggar Dafosa Warrior. “Pearls from heaven,” he shouted out again and again like a goat. I threw a mango and hit him. He found it with his stick, took it, and hobbled on. It felt good to help him out.
Slo-George said, “Can I’z be a runna?” You see, Slo-George could speak when he wanted something.
I laughed. “No, you can’t, you fook-brain. You’z too fookin’ slo’ an’ you’z too fookin’ stupid.” Question closed. I said, “Georgi, let’s go throw stones, ya?”
We left Kibera through the East Wall entrance. The garbage mound was in front of us. Already eight children, eleven scarf-headed women, and seven dogs sifted through the waste. The garbage mound grows forever. On its throne sat its king, Krazi Hari.
Krazi Hari read a half-eaten magazine. He nodded and mumbled to himself. I picked up a palm-size rock. Slo-George had a pebble. We threw. Despite being a growth retard, I am strong. The stone flew past Krazi Hari’s left ear. Slo-George’s pebble was short by four feet. The reader did not move from his magazine. We threw again. This time Slo-George hit Krazi Hari on the chest. The king of the garbage leaped up. He wore an unbuttoned black shirt and shredded black trousers. He yelled, “Ya dumb sheet, brainliss retard. Ya have nothin’ betta to do than dis. Take da Meejit and piss off ya half-brain fook-head, go fook da Meejit.” Krazi Hari threw his arms about and danced. He liked our daily visit. We wandered off as he continued to scream at our backs and shake his rolled-up magazine.
“Hey, Georgi, ya wan’ ta do Maasai Market?”
Slo-George’s grunt was excited.
Going to the Maasai Market meant a morning of lipping, which, because of my size, I was particularly good at. Slo-George was lookout. He loved it.
Some of the older thieves use thieving tricks, but I think they are rubbish because they have no class. One of these tricks is to trip a woman tourist, push her down on the floor, grab her bag, and run away before she can get up. You see: no class.
I had my own three lipping rules. Rule One: Make risk pay; do not steal junk. There is no point in stealing Maasai jewelry—it is worthless. Watches that look like gold are usually tin and are not worth the risk. Rule Two: Be patient. Better to wait for a bulging wallet that hangs off a fat foreign ass than lip a skinny Kenyan. Rule Three: Stop when you succeed. Do not get drunk on greed; the Maasai Market is every week. Once you win, you are done.
The Maasai Market was on a hill at the edge of the business district, by the old Euro Hotel. Years ago the hotel housed rich foreigners, but now it gets scruffy white tourists dressed worse than me. The market was well under way when we reached it. I left Slo-George at the entrance, with orders to be a lookout for a police raid that would never happen.
I walked through the stalls patiently and watched. The Maasai sold everything: food, jewelry, furniture, clothing, medicine. I walked up behind some white tourists, but one of them, a beady-eyed woman with gold glasses, spotted me and clutched her bag to her chest. I thought about lipping an old white couple buying antique tribal masks but passed them by; they had been ripped off enough for one day. Then I saw my target: safari tourists.
Safari tourists are special. They feel mighty after the animal parks. Then they spend a day in Nairobi before heading to the airport. They buy a lot and they are careless with their wallets. They feel as if they are hunters when in fact they are hunted. There were four of them, three men and a woman. They crowded round a hat seller, haggling over knitted hats. The woman got my attention; she was the only one not wearing safari clothes, and she had huge breasts. To lip tourists like them takes less brains than even Slo-George has.
I chose to use a Bingo Special, the Camera Grab, not because I needed to but for sport. I waited for the hat seller to complete his performance. The seller dropped his shoulders and looked sad; his act was almost over. He once told me, “The performance is what they pay for.” The wallets came out. One of the tourists (a man; large, gray, and heavy) was about to push his thick wallet back into his front trouser pocket. I ran and grabbed at the camera dangling from the neck of the younger man next to him. The younger tourist saw me (he was meant to) and swatted me down. I landed on the ground and the three men grabbed at me, like I was safari catch. I let them push me about, and I cried out; my act for them. I fell hard against the left hip of the fat man and, in a second, lipped his wallet. One of the men gripped my T-shirt, which ripped like paper. I ran. It had been a perfect Camera Grab. Three minutes later, I sat in a torn T-shirt at the entrance to the market beside Slo-George. I woke him up and we sifted through the fat man’s fat wallet.
There was no time to chat. I had less than an hour to get downtown and sell the six credit cards. The driver’s license for one Peter Guttenberg of Iowa, U.S.A., might, at best, fetch ten shillings. There were four hundred and sixty shillings in the wallet, and eighty-six U.S. dollars. I gave Slo-George forty shillings for his work and said I would see him later. He slid the folded notes down the front of his pants as I’d taught him. He grinned, happy, and left.
I ran to the business district, where I took Guttenberg’s credit cards to a man named Joe-Boy, although he had not been a boy for forty years. He owned a tailor shop on DuCane Street and wore a small silver cross on his left lapel. He wanted to know how long ago I had lipped the cards, and then we argued over the price. The questioning and the haggling were rituals; he always bought the credit cards, and always for fifty shillings apiece. He did not want to buy the driver’s license, but I gave it to him for free—good business.
When I was little, Senior Father taught me, “Man go back from where he come.”
“You mean back to Mama,” I said.
“No,” he said, and laughed. “Back to the mud.”
I was born in Nkubu. When I was a baby, the Senior Mothers of the village told Mama to put me back in the mud. “He is too small. He will die,” they said. But Mama folded me in her brown shawl and pushed out her hand. “Don’t touch my baby,” she said.
They let her alone.
Mama and me came to Nairobi, and then Mama was killed.
My feet burned on the noon street. My head was tight. Spirits floated up through the cracks in the tarmac from the dry red mud below. The spirits called to me, “Bingo, run; run from here.”
It was time to hide my morning’s takings. I always split my money; half I hide in one place, half I hide in another. I have double risk of half of it being found and double safety of never being broke. But I start each day as I left the last—just me, Bingo. I carry nothing of yesterday. The past weighs you down; too much past and you stop. I am Bingo. I am a runner; the greatest runner in Kibera, Nairobi, and probably the world.