With a hood over his head partly covering his face, he entered the hole. The sound of the buttons being punched at by the gamers who were there earlier, drowned his steps. The hole was dimly lit but packed with people whose eyes were all glued on the monitors. No one saw him entered. Or even uttered a word.
He’s been constantly struggling with the impulse to have a shot at it. He often share his thoughts with Namo, his childhood bestie, about his intentions to gamble with the machine.
Namo would sternly warn him;
“Don’t you ever learn how to play at these machines. You could easily get hooked and it can leave you high and dry.”
He’s heard stories from people who have won. He is aware of the feeling that’s associated with winning. He’s won competitions in life before but not like this one, with a machine. A machine programmed to take and give money. Machine giving money, has been the main point of attraction for him for quite a while.
He walked straight to cashier pushed a K100 note through the hatch and pointed at a disengaged machine across the floor.
“That’s Machine 30”,
The cashier, whose face was partly lit by the computer screen in front of her, indicated by rolling her eyes sideways.
He nodded in agreement, took a quick glance across the room and walked to the machine in haste.
The first K100 went. And a next one. And some more. All the hard earned proceeds of the seasons coffee harvest disappeared so easily with the strokes of the buttons. The machine has taken them all. It never gave.
Sweat trickled down the sides of his face. Like as if he was literally doing physical work under the blistering heat of the tropical sun tending to his coffee plot in the mountains of the highlands.
Namo’s words rang bells in his ears.
Namo was right, these beasts make money first before they pay or many times they will never pay at all.
This time, his first time, the machine didn’t pay.
Many Papua New Guineans are trapped in similar poverty creating habits . They spend their hard earned money on Poker machines and other gambling traps. And go on binge drinking and live on borrowed money to facilitate corruption. Only to add statistics to the already growing number of dependent and unproductive population.
Homes are torn apart, school aged kids are denied education. Evidence of invisible hunger, poor nutrition, stunted growth in kids, lawlessness and spread of poverty across different structures of the society is ubiquitous.
Successful people don’t take gambling as business.
Taking farming as business can create miracles and pay handsomely. Unlike the gambling machines that a growing number of Papua New Guineans kneel at each day expecting it to rain blessings.
GlenH - Aug 17, 2023gghayoge at gmail.com