Inside the life of a Nairobi Sugar Baby

Sponsors and the sponsored. ‘Blessers’ and their ‘blessees’. It’s become a bit of a cult phenomenon lately, the whole concept of being a girl who lives off a man who gives her life’s luxuries while she spends her time making herself pretty for him. There are no hard statistics but if the news, blogs and social media posts are anything to go by, these relationships are at an all-time high in Kenya.

Driven by the disproportionately large lifestyles she sees on reality shows such as 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians', today’s 20-something-year-old woman is primed to desire the wealth and extravagance her heroines display. That is why I am a bit surprised when I first meet 24-year-old Mwende. She is dressed in jeans and a bright chiffon top. Other than a pale lipstick, she isn’t wearing any make-up. In place of what I thought would be an expensive weave is natural hair combed into a neat, high bun.

“It isn’t like you see in the movies where a filthy rich man sweeps you off your feet and spoils you with cars and apartments just for looking pretty,” she tells me when I ask about her life. “It is more like a job, or a business arrangement.”

Mwende came to the city five years ago from her home in Machakos to attend college. She didn’t qualify to join university as a regular student and her parents couldn’t afford the parallel degree programme so she enrolled for a diploma course. She met her ‘sponsor’ when she went on her first job interview. He owned the company she was interviewing to join.

“I was the only interviewee who didn’t have a degree so he told me that he couldn’t hire me. He seemed concerned that I was so young. He told me that it would be near impossible to get a job with my diploma. (But he said) he could help me,” she recalls how it all began.

“My first reaction was outrage. I stormed out of that office, half-running to the bus stop. Alone with my thoughts back at the hostel (I was living in), the idea began to make sense. I needed help. I didn’t even have the Sh6,000 I needed to pay for the shared room at the hostel,” she recalls.

“I had seen the relief on my parents’ faces when I finally got my diploma. I was one less mouth to feed for them; they have four others at home. I know they stretched their accounts to pay my fees. I couldn’t possibly start asking them for rent,” she says.

So she called the man who had propositioned her and agreed to an arrangement. In exchange for sex and occasional lunches, her 55-year-old companion enrolled her in a parallel degree programme and started a clothing shop for her in town whose proceeds she uses to pay her bills. He is her financial solution, she says.

Mwende isn’t under any illusions about what to expect from her companion. She knows that this isn’t a courtship. It isn’t a progressive relationship. There is never going to be romance, marriage and children.

“He has a beautiful family, a good marriage. He never complains about his wife. We meet only during the day. He is home at 6pm every night. I think he just needs to feel virile and desirable,” she says.

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WAMBUI'S STORY

When I meet 25-year-old Wambui, another Nairobi Sugar Baby, she brings up an interesting argument to support her position: There is no difference between what she is doing and what many of our grandparents and their ancestors did.

“(In the past), women were home-makers and child-bearers in exchange for material security from their men. Our parents were the same. It’s the same concept, it’s just that now people have a name for it,” she says.

Before she warms up to me, Wambui is shy, almost timid. Curvy and chocolate-skinned, she is very easy on the eye. In sharp contrast to Mwende, she is utterly feminine in her fitting short dress, hair extensions and a fully made-up face. “This is how he likes me to look,” she tells me.

‘He’ refers to her lover, a 48-year-old man she met when she was a university student three years ago. She admits that he wasn’t the first older man she had dated.

“The first one was 35. He was married. He was good-looking but he was dishonest. He wasn’t consistent. I gave him my time, allowed him to take me out of town many times but sometimes he refused to give me the money he had promised,” she says.

She met her current companion when she was part of an alcohol promotion team at one of the clubs he owns. It has been three years since their dalliance began. ‘Designer girlfriend’ is the term she chooses to describe her role in his life.

“I look how he wants, do the things he wants and I do not ask questions. He likes things to go his way, his woman to look a certain way. He pays for a tailor-made relationship,” she says.

I have known Wambui for about four weeks when she invites me to her home, a two-bedroomed apartment off Kiambu Road. It is a neat, well-furnished space. There are no photographs on the walls or the shelf. The décor is dark green with brown undertones. It looks like a man’s house.

“He bought all the furniture,” she says, as if reading my thoughts.

Her companion owns the lease and everything in the house, including her… for now. He also owns the shiny black Nissan Tiida that she drives. He pays all he bills and gives her a monthly stipend of Sh100,000.

“Being with him is different from when I dated guys my age. He needs me to be mature, not nag or be late. He also expects discretion,” she says.

What’s her plan? To depend on him until he replaces her for a younger model? “I do not have a job yet. I just landed an internship so I am in this for a while until I am able to stand on my own financially,” she says.

Because it is his house, her companion can drop by any time he wants. Her phone rings while we are doing this interview. He hopes she is home because he is a few minutes away. I have to leave, she tells me. I only mange to get a glimpse of him. Short, potbellied, light-skinned with a spray of skin tags on his face.

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MAUREEN'S STORY

The profile of a sugar daddy seems pretty straightforward: He is an older man with a lot of extra cash to spend. This man doesn’t stumble into these arrangements, he calculates them. He has his reasons for wanting the company of younger women and he is clear about what he is willing to give in return.

The profile of the sugar baby, on the other hand, seems fluid. The only thing they seem to have in common is their youth. Otherwise, she could be any young woman you brush shoulders with on the street.

Some, like Mwende and Wambui, are with these men because they see them as viable economic options. Others, like Maureen, a 28-year-old auditor, seem to have different motivations.

At a glance, it is obvious that Maureen isn’t naïve. In fact, she is the opposite – vivacious and assertive. She wears spectacles that make her seem sterner than she actually is.

When she met her sugar daddy who is now 60, Maureen  was a second-year university student working part-time at a late-night coffee place in town.

“When I joined university, my parents agreed to pay my fees and the Sh4,500 rent for my hostel, and I would find a small job in the city to get cash for books and clothes,” she says.

So she got a job at the cafeteria that was paying Sh8,000 per month. She went to school during the day and did the night shift to about 2am. It was exhausting, she says. If not for the tips that she got, the money wasn’t nearly enough.

“When he propositioned me, I saw him as a way out,” she recalls.

He urged her to quit that job and focus her energies on school. She got into a physical relationship with him and in return, he gave her cash whenever she asked.

Over the years, their relationship has evolved. They are still intimate but he has become a father-figure and mentor to her. “I have gained immensely from his mentorship. He held my hand when I started working. I run to him with every crisis I face at work. Even the job I have now, I got it through his connections,” she says. “Initially, I was a little repulsed by him but we have cultivated a friendship over the years. There are no sparks but he is nice and kind. Plus I love picking his brain.”

For now, she says, she is using him to get ahead. She might stop when she feels strong enough to stand on her own. “It can’t last forever,” she says. “We might go our separate ways at some point. He has a family.”

In the course of their seven-year-long relationship, Maureen has dated men her age. She is also almost certain that he has seen other young women. So what role does she play in his life? “I think he is in it because he feels like he is helping a woman in trouble. I remember the first time he saw me in that cafeteria; he was struck by how young I seemed. I am his little project,” she says.

She hopes to meet a man to settle down with, maybe have children with and then pray that her little girls will never have to improvise like she did – or like Mwende and Wambui felt they had to.

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Quick Facts

•  While it is widely reported on today, cross-generational sex is not new.

•  The UNAIDS general population survey of 2002 describes cross-generational sex as young women having non-marital sex with men who are 10 or more years older than them.

•  A 2003 report by USAID found that urban areas are much more favourable for these relationships to flourish as the communities here are less close knit.

•  According to the same report, the period of time it takes from the couple meeting to engaging in sexual relations is between one day and three months.

•  A review of more than 45 studies in Africa concludes that cross-generational sex is always transactional.

•  The relationships usually come to an end when the older man’s money runs out or when the wives find out.

•  Most cross-generational couples underestimate the risks they face for contracting HIV, sexually transmitted infections as well as unintended pregnancies.