Weekday sins

• Any wife or girlfriend who thinks that her man is likely to cheat between Friday and Sunday, had better think again.
• Hotels that have provisions for “day rooms”, are busier on Wedne-sdays and Thursdays, in Nairobi, Eldoret, Mombasa, Nakuru and Thika.

A few minutes later, a bigger and newer vehicle pulled up near hers and no sooner had the car pulled up than the lady came out of her car and casually walked towards the guest house.

My colleague followed her and pretended to also seek a room. We kept watch on the bigger car and once the lady settled the bill, she made a call and said, “ I am now ok.”

A dark well built man in a navy blue suit got out of the parked car and followed her to the guest house. In about three minutes, he was inside the guesthouse and the big gate locked behind them.

“The two come at least twice a month. They are regular and I do not think they are husband and wife,” the caretaker confides on condition we do not name the guesthouse.

More enquiries lead us to another hotel along Dubois Road at 2.15pm. We enquire about a day room. “You can have one at Sh800 but if you are not staying for more than two hours, “we can talk”.

As “investigators”, we are more interested in the “we can talk” bit. We charge Sh800 for a whole day but I can get you a room with Sh500 for one hour,” the receptionist tries to make a deal.

“How many rooms can we get? My colleague asks. “We only have two left but more would be available in an hour or two as those occupying them are not residents,” she innocently tells her potential clients. Twenty six out of 28 rooms fully booked at 2.15pm on a Tuesday!

The following day, we move to a higher class hotel to see if we could get a room for two hours. It is 11am when we reach the hotel in the city centre.

Here, all rooms are booked through normal hotel arrangements but we can get a standard room at 75 per cent of the rates if we were to state exactly when we want the room for. According to a businesswoman who is pursuing a divorce case at the High Court in Nairobi, she allegedly caught her husband red handed during the day.

“I did a lot of investigations before I knew what was happening,” she insists from the beginning. She used to call his office shortly after lunch and he wouldn’t be in.

“I always called him on Tuesday or Thursday as I would not be very busy on both days,” she goes on.

Her husband’s colleague secretly called her and asked her to find out why her husband always visited the hotel, near University of Nairobi with another unidentified lady on Tuesdays.

“On the fateful day, I patiently lay in wait at the hotel’s lobby at 1:30pm. I had gathered information that was his time at the hotel,” she says.
She saw it all although she was pretended to read a newspaper.

“He paid for the room and went up the stairs. The lady, whom I knew as his former colleague, followed him. Just as she closed the door, I bust in,” narrates the mother of two whose divorce case is almost over.

According to her, the man had paid Sh2,475, for the day service, 50 per cent of the normal hotel rate.

While some hotels will not charge half rates, most of them seem to have responded to “demand” and hired daytime room staff. It seems the era of keeping girlfriends or mistresses and having to pay their rents, bills and upkeep is threatened by this phenomenon.

Perhaps due to pressure of work and traffic snarl ups, it is easier for the working class or business people to excuse themselves and afford to stay out of office longer than usual or late in the evening during weekdays.