"Gambling” can mean (amongst other things) to take a chance by betting an amount of money or money’s worth in property, in the hope of realising a return on his or her bet or wager.  In normal life, we are always claiming to be taking gambles here and there. 

In the early days (my early days), there was a gentleman by the name of Kalema. Kalema was a cripple but, as they say, disability does not necessarily mean being unable. The guy had his board and dice game.

This game which involved placing money on the board and rolling the dice was popularly known as "pata poteya” (get, lose), in other words, you could either win or lose. Far from the truth.  The most likely scenario is that, you lost and he (Kalema) gained. In his words, there was no loss for him.

This guy was a real mobile trader, not that he dealt in mobile phones; I suppose the inventor of the mobile phone must have been wearing pampers then! Most of the current technology has hardly been in use for twenty years.

Imagine, when we went to secondary school, we were using wooden combs to comb our hair. It was unheard of shaving your hair off to the skin. That was only done for kids who had lice or very old men and women who did not have any parent left on earth.

It was a taboo shaving your hair off to the skin. They used to say that, if you dared do so, then you would lose your father or something like that.  By the way, it was traditional for children of the deceased to shave off all their hair by use of a razor blade. 

The use of the modern day electrical hair clippers was not even heard of, those who were wealthy enough had the luxury of being shaved by the likes of Mathias, using the Chinese manual clippers. These had two opposite jaws sliding over each other on the clenching and unclenching of the user’s fingers.

In the whole of Kijura parish (Akarere ka Kijura), there was only one man with such a machine, he moved from market to market.  Every big village had a different market day and hence, if you missed having a hair cut for one reason or the other, you would probably have had to wait for a whole week before Mathias returned to your village.

As for the women, that is the girls, their mums and mums of their mums would all ‘fry’ their hair straight after which, they would tie it into mounds like those of a sweet potato field.

Like Mathias, Kalema used to ply the same market places; unlike Mathias, Kalema used to travel as far as Kasese and Kilembe mines. He would only visit each market place in a fortnight or two. 

He normally arrived in Kijura sometime before pay day. The Pata Poteya guy was one of the guys that always came to make a quick kill.  Imagine a worker walking out of the pay office with all his monthly earnings, only to find Kalema already waiting for him. 

The poor guy wanting to rapidly make his money "produce” or multiply, would walk to Kalema and begin wagering. If he is lucky, he might take an hour or two to get beaten, otherwise, it was a matter of a few minutes and he would be broke!

I have always wondered why people gamble even when they know well that, their chances of winning are slimmer than those of loosing! 

Before I forget to remember, Kalema always came with a syndicate of people who would wager just like the normal (un-suspecting gamblers) folk, to get the gambling going. They too seemed to loose but in reality, they won more than they lost.

While we were at St Leo’s College (the greatest college south of the Sahara, north of the Limpompo), we used to gamble. We lost all our school fees. It seems its understandable that there are no casinos in Rwanda.
 
Contact: Mfashumwana@fastmail.fm