Tales for a lodging owner

By Crazy Monday Correspondent 

A slightly tipsy couple walks up to the reception of a swanky boarding house in Malindi.
In Kiswahili, the man demands for a room: "Nauliza nyumba bwana!" The booking clerk looks up from a European Cup football game he is watching on television and rubs his eyes.
He sharply scrutinises the man’s face and then the woman’s and scratches his shaggy beard. "The management only allows married couples here," he says curtly pointing to a notice on the wall.
The notice advertises the dos and don’ts of the house. Chewing of miraa, taking alcohol and homosexuality are not allowed in the premises.
And couples are only allowed if they can prove to be legally married.
The man throws a tantrum and condemns what he calls discriminatory and archaic laws. He gives some free civic education about the new Constitution and the freedom it has given people.
The booking clerk cuts him short. "Sir, shouting is not permitted in this lodge."
Then two couples of Arab extraction arrive, also seeking accommodation. The men are in trademark kanzus and Muslim caps while the women are clad in buibuis.
They tell the booking clerk that they had forgotten their identification documents.
Apparently, the clerk assumes that they are married and books them in.
The earlier guest now lowers his voice and drops his confrontational stance. Apparently this does not work and he shouts in frustration: "Wewe mjinga sana (you are a fool)". He holds his mesmerised beau around her waist and both walk out into the night.
These are some of the outlandish scenes common at lodgings in Kenya.
From selling condoms exorbitantly to people in dire need to procuring local women for weary travellers, lodging operators are repositories of shocking stories.
According to Moses, an elderly bar and lodging operator on a seedy Nairobi street, many city hospitality players do a compromise between vetting female companions of lodging men and totally banning them.
They allow them alright, but a woman cannot leave the premises without the man’s consent. "We often detain them at the door, run up to the room and ask the men if they have allowed them to leave and whether anything is missing," says Moses.
He says this standard Nairobi lodging caution that, while appearing intrusive, has saved the property of many a male lodger and the reputation of many guesthouses. "Of course, we know that some of these twilight ladies would rob a man blind or drug him given half a chance," he says.
Female companionColman Kambi travels frequently due to the nature of his job and has visited the major towns in this country.
He singles out Meru as the most guest friendly town outside Nairobi. "In Meru, beer is sold at the lodging reception and the hotel staff are always ready to serve it in your room," he says.
He adds that the booking process there is fast and professional and all the operators require is your ID card, passport or driving licence. In Meru, few questions are asked about one’s female companion.
Kambi also remembers visiting Kisumu city and putting up in a sleazy neighbourhood. He did not enjoy the experience. "I was down financially and was travelling on a shoestring budget," he says.
He used his contacts and was directed to a cheap place where a room was going for Sh100. "But upon asking at the reception, I realised that this was all a gimmick. They said that theirs were double rooms and guests had to pay Sh100 for each bed in the room," he says.
LovemakingKambi did not sleep a wink that night on account of the feisty activities going on all around him. Apparently, this was a red light district where teams of lovebirds would come, do their thing noisily and drunkenly and leave.
"The lovemaking and accompanying moans were unlike anything I have ever encountered before; they were straight out of a sex guide," he says.
At one lodging in Garissa, the staff are thorough with the luggage check to ensure visitors don’t bring in bombs and other contraband.
And following a spate of murders of twilight girls in Thika, Kambi says that lodging owners there are very careful nowadays especially when booking in men who look suave and educated.
"Man, you will have to produce an ID card and your details are taken down, including your phone number and place of work," Kambi says.
"A woman accompanying a man to a Thika lodging must produce an ID card for her details to be taken down as well, failure to do which she must leave irrespective of whether she is a regular girlfriend or a twilight operator," says Kambi.
fully booked
Brian Wechuli, a sports coach, remembers arriving late in Kakamega for an assignment accompanied by his wife. All the lodgings were fully booked owing to a major sports function that was going on. "I managed to get a single room for Sh400 but the booking clerk demanded that I pay a similar amount for my wife," he says.
Puzzled, Wechuli complained but the hotel staff wouldn’t budge. As it was approaching midnight, he grudgingly paid up. He later learnt that this is the norm when the demand for rooms goes up.
But Mama Ciru, a lodging operator on the outskirts of Nakuru, defends some of the stringent rules.
"In this business, we encounter many strange things, some which border on the criminal and one has to be careful," she says. Discretion and quick judgment are the hallmark of the industry.
"When I feel uncomfortable about a guest, especially those who want to be booked in a hurry or through a proxy, I often ask them to produce extra identification documents and mostly they leave in a huff," she says. And her rule of thumb is that sinister guests often carry bulky luggage, have little or no documents on them and don’t allow the hotel staff to get a good look at their faces.
She has seen a lot. A man and his wife once came to settle their differences physically in a room and she had to intervene by calling the police.
Original agreementBut the most frequent problems arise when men beat their companions in the rooms, refuse to pay for services rendered, are hugely endowed biologically for their partners’ comfort, or get adventurous with sordid tricks that are not in the original agreement.
"You don’t sleep when you have a full house but stand by in case the ‘normal screams’ get beyond the admissible levels and we have to rescue a woman in distress," she says.
Once, some homosexuals beat her at her own game and gained entry into her rooms. "They were two dotcom couples, who would book themselves in two double rooms, one for the men and the other for the women," she recalls. But at night they would swap places with the two guys getting cosy in one room," she says.
This game continued for some time until Mama Ciru laid a trap and busted them. She has since introduced a new rule of thoroughly vetting young collegiate couples in case they are gays under cover.
twilight girls
She says that running a lodging is mainly a matter of image. "People can perceive your place as being patronised by homosexuals, lesbians, wife barterers, sinning pastors and so on even from one incident and this can harm your business," she says.
Mama Ciru says men have been robbed by twilight ladies in her establishment when they did not heed her offer to keep some of their money for them.
But she has since solved the problem by ‘approving’ some local twilight girls for whom no questions are asked when they accompany men to her establishment.
"Any newcomer to this arrangement must first prove to be of good conduct before she can accompany a man into our rooms," she says and adds: "In this industry, we blacklist girls known to be of itchy fingers or in the practice of drugging men."
Old Moses concurs with Mama Ciru. "There are well known twilight girls whom I have banned from my place on account of their bad reputation and they know it," he says. He adds that a lodging owner sighs with relief only in the morning if nothing bad is reported.