“I’m never safe; I have to look for the next best thing. Men lie to me, so I lie to them. He can always find someone prettier or younger than me, so I have to have a Plan B.”

Dan, on the other hand, has a plan A and B, but no C. “I’ve never had a wandering eye. There is no other woman apart from my wife and mistress.”

Lilian tells of all the different men she’s met online and the large sums of money they have given her. She dated one 65-year-old man living in Lavington when she was 25, who was a good cook and very generous.

“Oh my goodness, you should see my Western Union. I could have bought a house by now. At least I’m not a prostitute on the streets. Thank God for the Internet,” she says as she shows deposit slip after deposit slip. On one of the paychecks from a wealthy Hungarian man, she took her brother on
a well-deserved vacation to Tanzania. Currently talking to a high-ranking man for Nokia in the Middle East, Lilian says she can’t complain about her financial situations.

Money, it seems, plays the largest part of the relationship, and it’s a state of affairs that Dan has resigned himself to as well.

“I’ve told her [his mistress] to always be straight with me and let me know if she meets someone who can give her more,” he shares.

Karuri is quick to observe that money will only satisfy to a certain level. “By the time she is done with this relationship, she will have a lot of money, but the void will even be bigger than when she met this man.”

Lilian hasn’t always been so cynical about love. When she was 16 she fell in love with a Kenyan her own age.

“I was so in love with him. I was all about him,” she reminisces.

They waited to have sex until she was
18 years old and she became pregnant at the age of 19. She said everything went downhill after her son was born. The son’s father told her he was going to move to Mombasa to find work and send for them, but Lilian never saw his face again and had to endure her mother’s daily, “I told you so.”

“I was very angry for a long time.”

The whole situation hit Lilian hard and she never dated another black man or anyone her age again. She says now that she is not attracted to black men and likes older men because they have their priorities and desires in order.

A Crocodile

Odima believes that first time intimate relationships tend to have a lot of unmet expectations that result in rejection and an overall lack of trust.

“If there is no intervention in the case of a relationship that turns sour in teenage years, then it is true, the stage is set either for revenge, mistreating oneself or reacting in a negative sense to others,” Odima concludes.

And this, Odima says, is seen in dysfunctional relationships.

Karuri adds, “If you heal the broken heart immediately then there is no void. And she will not look to fill the void elsewhere.”

But love, Lilian says, is just in one of the many movies she likes to watch.

She’s incredibly conscious and calculated in her every move and likens the world to a body of water, ever changing, unpredictable and ruthless at times. She depicts herself as queen of this world, one who refuses to be swallowed whole but has instead evolved to triumph over it.

Her actions might not be proper or conventional, but she does what she must to provide the kind of life for her son and family that she could not get otherwise.

Karuri believes actions such as Lilian’s are a cause for concern, “If we are not careful, we will lose a whole generation to sexual liberation.” Or have we already? Both Dan and Lilian represent a major trend, and both appear to be perfectly happy, one feeling satisfied that he’s fitting in with the crowd, the other reaping financial benefits.

Tune in to Kenyan radio; look around at the local hotspots; check out your married neighbor. The sugar daddy/sugar baby relationship is alive and well; but as this need-based union increases in popularity, so will the debate on whether having
a girlfriend for the weekends or more
than enough extra cash to take a lavish vacation are worth risking marriages, forgoing true love, damaging self-esteems and challenging relationships as we know them. Is this the direction that relationships in Kenya are heading and what are the long term ramifications? Now is the time for us to be talking.

(By Sandra Grzybowski and Rose Odengo)


*Names have been changed

First published in the April 2012 issue of Destination Magazine

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