He is Ososolilo, the god of street gambling, so they say.
I have heard enough about him but have never encountered him, and I know I will one day, as the father of street gambling in Marwa.
Ososoliso moved from the most dangerous area of the slum, called Lungu, an area we look at from a distance.
In the history of the slums, Marwa, where I lived, was the safest area in the vicinity, followed by Letu, a neighborhood slum.
Most people who moved out of Marwa went to Uptown, which was the most sophisticated place for a better life, while a few who moved to our side are said to be tired of living dangerously.
In the slums, survival is the real deal, and everyone knows how to get enough to survive in daily life, but we have one side business in common: ‘gambling’.
A few times, we play a timing post game in which the goalpost is measured with a ball space to pass through; whoever scores with a strike from a distance shot wins the bet, and if more than one person scores, they continue playing till there remains one man standing.
At weekends, we play three-a-side soccer or monkey Post soccer, where each winning team pockets the bet of the losing team in several competitive matches.
If we don't have the strength to play soccer, we play WHOT-cards, but almost every day, we toss dice because we believe tossing a die and winning is pure luck.
So when Ososolilo came and terrorized the streets of Marwa, winning every gamble he played made me wonder.
“ Is he the god of street gambling?” I asked myself, and after a rethink.
“ Is there something behind the scenes that people don't know?” I concluded and determined that any day I met him, it would be a match between the bad and the evil, because I knew he must have heard about me too.
Within a short period of time, he was the most feared opponent in any significant, “Ososoliso, the god of gambling,” he called himself "Evertime he won" which is so, if I am not to lie.
I heard that when you play him in a monkey post, he will say, “ I will die here with you”, and usually defends roughly and relentlessly, though he is an excellent attacker who can also score goals from any angle, which makes everyone want him to be their team member.
A source from a friend, Banpu, told me he rarely loses in a timing post, and if it was a card game, his playing style was strict because he reads games, watches cards, and reads minds, but has never lost once in tossing a die.
“ He has no weakness,” I asked, saying How come.
Maybe he is what he said he is, “ god of street gambling,” Banpu replied.
It is the weekend, and it is inevitable for the clash will happen.
Ososoliso was my age; he was taller and fair in complexion. “ I am Ajay Super,” I introduced myself to him, and he acknowledged that he knew all about me as I do about him.
“ For a god of street gambling, what is your plan?” I asked.
“ I have done my research,” he said, tugging at his chest, and continued to speak as everyone listened to him.
“ The three richest people in the world are business owners, gamblers, and government workers,” he concluded.
“ So are you telling us that you got to risk things by gambling every time?” Zilly, another pal, asked, knowing what Ososoliso was trying to say.
“ Today's gambling is a facing game,” Banpu interrupted.
“ We want to know the best, right?” Ososoliso replied with a smile, showing that he was up to the task.
It was morning, so we decided to play all the games and started with the timing post. Ososoliso won the game, scoring twenty-five shots out of thirty while I scored twenty-three.
After he was confirmed as the winner, he jumped up and said, “Ososoliso,” while others helped him to complete it by saying, god of street gambling.
I was so shocked that I saw people who praised me divert their support in the blink of an eye.
The second game was the monkey-post soccer game, and I chose two teammates while everyone wanted Ososoliso to choose them.
After ten minutes, I observed that, truly, he can score and defend effectively, but he doesn't know how to dribble like me, so I made sure I short-passed his teammates, did one or two passes to beat him, and scored every time we met, as I won the second contest convincingly.
Then we moved to the WHOT-card game, but because no one can shuffle as smoothly and entertainingly as Ososoliso, they never knew he could keep big numbers towards the end of the card.
I quickly observed that when I noticed that he picked up cards in the first five attempts without playing and allowed me to play so he could then put the pressure on me towards the end, so I could pick big numbers, which would make me lose when counting cards numbers came up, having no more cards.
After so many tricks, he also lost, and the people who praised him started shifting their attention towards me.
" Something told me Ajay Super is better," a voice came from the crowd, and I nodded in disbelief.
“Let us go into dice tossing,” I said after I had regained my confidence, and so we started.
I noticed that whenever Ososoliso tossed his die with his left hand, it was a six, and he would quickly pick up the die, so I knew that something was wrong somewhere. But when he tossed with his right hand, I had a chance of winning.
He would intentionally play fair twice and win ten times in a row.
“ You are a cheat,” I said, pointing at Ososoliso, who was shocked.
“ He has another die, the one he usually picks up immediately,” I concluded.
Everyone looked surprised, but they did not believe me. “ Is it because you are losing or what?” Zilly said after laughing.
“You don't want to accept that he is better at dice,” Banpu uttered, and the tension started to rise.
“ Okay, I quit for today,” Ososoliso said, and everyone looked at one another, and I didn't understand this.
“ Ososoliso has never quit,” a voice said from the crowd.
“ He said he will never quit,” Banpu replied, and the suspense grew intense.
“ Let us search him; something smells fishy,” Shamee, who was silent throughout the contest, said, and everyone said it together, “ let us search him”
As we moved close to him, he started to be defensive; then, all of a sudden, Olomi, another person from the audience, shouted.
“That is it,” and we all looked towards the direction he pointed his fingers.
We saw a die that had six written on all six sides, and we couldn't believe our eyes.
“ This guy has been chopping our money all these weeks,” Shamee uttered in disbelief.
“ So the god of street gambling has a secret,” Ndika came out of the audience and clapped in surprise.
“ Guy, you go pay us all our money today,” Zilly said, holding Ososoliso by the tip of his top.
Ososoliso just kept quiet, saying nothing and looking like an antelope that was caught by a lion.
We made sure we emptied his pockets before letting him go, as he hid his face, looking at the ground, and that was the last time we saw him.
He moved back to the other side of the slum where cheating is allowed and continued living dangerously.
Change is now everywhere, and the slum has developed into a city, and opportunities are now everywhere.
For the slums of Marwa, where we stood with our claims and always looked at the slums of Lungu, which also stood to theirs, we were never enemies or friends either.
We just have different views that encompass our scenery.
Just like the involvement behind the scenes.
