Lately, for largely business reasons, I have found myself spending a lot of time in and around high-end Nairobi hotels. You might already know this city as a vastly expanding concrete jungle with streets clogged by multi-coloured, loud music playing in dingy matatus, whose bodies look to have been made from mildly chewed steel, hastily welded together and sent out to pollute the environment with noise and bellowing smoke from their noisy exhausts. It is a city on the move; the undisputed finance capital of East Africa.
But Nairobi also seems to have a thriving hotel industry, whose magic bullet might not be the hundreds of thousands of tourists that flock Kenya for the Wildebeest migration and other tourism delights on offer. During my stay in some relatively pricey, upmarket hotel along Waiyaki Way, I might have inadvertently stumbled onto the secret financial dope powering Kenyan hotels. Eureka! During weekdays, this hotel that is bordered by high rise office blocks on one side and the expressway on the other side, seems to see a surge of traffic between noon and 2:30pm.
The parking lots are full but the restaurants and conference facilities do not reflect this traffic. Curious, I casually asked a Kenyan buddy about it. She laughed so hard and then said just one word: Uasherati! That is Swahili for ‘promiscuity, fornication, or debauchery’. I must have looked confused because she immediately volunteered more information. ‘Here, unlike you people in Uganda, married people tend to cheat with married people. It is the way marriages have been strengthened in these parts of the world. It is safer too because both have a lot to lose if word gets out. These plush hotel walls are the best at keeping secrets. The Askari will not even bother looking your way if you went in with a crisp, nicely worn blouse and walked out with it inside out and your bra on the head. They mind their own business and we appreciate it.’
My curiosity was peaked.
She continued: ‘Marrieds here have pooped out their souls for a stolen piece of lunchtime pleasure.’ I told her in Uganda, we call this ‘lunch hour fellowship’ and the suburbs of Kyanja and surrounding areas have thriving AirBnB businesses, thanks to it. Yes, our people wanna enjoy some off home turf rendezvous but on a budget. The economy is tough. In Kenya, it looks like the big boys are happy to fork out $500 for an hour of fun.
Hotel owners are not complaining. Not sure if they have special discounts for ‘day use’ but if I owned a hotel in Westlands, I might seriously consider this offering. My buddy told me, Nairobi couples somehow know this open secret but do not want to talk about it. The loving girlfriend or wife who used to pack lunch for her partner and dash to his office for a surprise lunch date stopped because of repeated ‘I am stuck in a client meeting in Kilimani’ excuses.
She also learnt to return the favour by ‘going for lazy lunch with the girls’. It is band for band in these lunchtime Olympics. Aura for aura; every inch is earned. No pun intended. She told me it is not uncommon for couples who vacation together, go to church together, raise kids together to somehow have regular weekly lunchtime Olympics with each other’s partners. It is a type of twisted swinging not uncommon on these streets. It also happens like clock work. Strictly one hour. Things in Nairobi run fast and on a very tight schedule; even the cheating.