Most couples argue that while all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive.
“Sometimes you protect your loved one from something for a better cause,” Lila, a friend of my wife, Irene told us when we met her for dinner.
In her case, she held a secret from her husband for two years, all in the name of a surprise.
And the argument between the two did not go down as she had thought it would.
“The first time he discovered the house, he thought I would lie. It was like a potential set-up for betrayal and violation of trust.
“But he understood that I withheld information from him,” Lila paused and giggled, sipped a glass of wine and looked at the traffic on Moi Avenue, from the balcony of the restaurant we were meeting.
There are times when you meet someone for a talk and all you have to do is listen, no questions. You let them dictate the flow of their story for if you interrupt you may push them to a different chapter, one they had not planned for.
Or make them forget the flow of their prose. If the drama is sweet, you leave the chef to cook his own broth. You only wait for the delicacy.
Lila and Damian, his husband and police officer, have been married for nearly seven years.
“We have never argued or quarrelled. The best point is we always understand each other,” the mother of two told us.
“Before marrying him, I used to save at my Co-op bank, my personal account and I used to plan to build a house for my future years. My father shared wealth among us (me and my siblings) and I got a parcel of land in Tigoni.
“After we married, we opened a joint account, which both of us manage, but I remained with my savings and continued to save my cash,” Lila added.
The waitress, a beautiful lady with the tag Tamima came to us and asked for our orders. We had previously ordered two bottles of Rosso Nobile Cioccolato, German wine.
“How do you pronounce this name? I am telling my husband here that it's Italian,” my wife Irene asked the waitress as we all laughed.
“I argued it was German and the name is derived from chocolate,” I argued as she put her hand over mine.
Over the years, I always noticed that Irene was always keen on setting her boundaries. Women haa!. She had caught me catching a glimpse of the waitress as she brought the wine.
“It’s German,” the waitress sided with me and smiled, keeping her answer brief, keen not to ignite some debate and fire she was interested in.
“We’ll all have grilled lamb, with veggies and salads,” I ordered for us as agreed prior.
As the waiter moved on to another table, we shifted our focus to Lila who was smiling and looking at us.
“You two always look like some high school lovebirds, grinning over each other,” she joked as we burst into laughter.
“Where were we anyway?” she asked and Irene reminded her that she was telling us about the joint account.
“Yes…”
Lila stated that after three years of marriage, Damian, the husband, was posted to different towns and the family opted to stay at their home on the outskirts of Limuru, where they had rented.
“My husband always promised to have us build. He knew of the land in Tigoni but we had agreed to plant trees in it and leave it idle for a few years as we saved to purchase another, our own.
“But in the past three years, he never visited the farm as he was always away for work, especially after being promoted and only visited for weekends, or I would travel to North Eastern too to visit him.”
The two thus agreed to have the wife manage most of the finances, ensure kids are in primary school, their farm up-country - in Damian's home - is maintained and cultivated and the products sold.
“I literally ran everything. He really trusts me beyond and above and this is so loving of him,” Lila added as the waitress came back with our meal.
“I planned to surprise him with the house and planned to have it ready in the next two years so as he was pushing for a transfer back to Nairobi. He also was planning to quit after five years to focus on the farm business as I continued with my profession, teaching at a high school near our home in Limuru,” Lila stated.
She added that this was the main reason why she never relocated with him from time to time.
With her savings, she embarked on the project, and also secured a loan from Co-op Bank as an addition.
She also documented everything she did on her laptop and indicated how she planned to surprise him. To avoid shrouding the whole project in secrecy, she liaised with Diaman’s parents and her own in the last year, to keep them abreast of the surprise.
The day Damian discovered the project was when he was at home for the weekend and asked to send some emails with her laptop.
“He forgot his own at his workplace and most times, he never perused through mine unless I had issues that needed to be fixed,” Lila explained, adding that he read of it but did not mention it.
“I didn’t even know if he read it. I thought but never asked him or never read it. I learnt later that he saw his family and they filled him on the details and concurred with the details in my diary.
How Damian perceived the project surprised them all. They thought he’d be angry or feel deceived.
“His father told me that he said he knew he had a smart wife who was full of surprises and he knew that I had planned to do something with my savings.”
Then, one day he came home and asked her to have a talk on the project.
“Is there any other secret you are hiding from me?” Damian asked.
“No,” Lila stated that she answered, terrified.
“Okay. I went through your budget and plan and saw that you are smart enough to work on a low-cost budget. This is amazing. Now that I caught you planning to surprise me, I also have a surprise for you,” Damian stated.
Lila told us that she believed that was the end of their marriage. She was regretting taking a risk, a gamble on something so sensitive. But…
“I realized that you are spending so much on purchases and if you’d have consulted me, you’d have saved so much.
“ Co-op bank accounts always has the Co-op Banks Chapa Pay, where you pay for goods and services online. Like this wholesale where you can buy goods in bulk rather than where you have been trading before.
“The traders get more customers by accepting online card payments via Chapa Pay, which is Co-op Bank’s eCommerce solution! With Co-op Bank eCommerce they receive a unique link (Pay-By-Link) that they use to invoice their customers.
“If a customer makes a wrong payment, they can reverse the payment without you calling the bank for a reversal,” Damian stated.
He added that in fact, he was planning on using it for their farm produces as business people do not incur any cost to get the Pay-By-Link solution as it is free to get on board.
“I breathed a sigh of relief. He was on board and even came up with a solution to it,” Lila stated.
“He even loved the house, the design, but made me promise him not to plan any more surprises.
What astounded Lila most, is that he offered to cover half of the cost of the loan she had taken and have them complete the house.
“He told me that probably he would have postponed the project to a few years later to allow us to focus on our businesses and that the risk I took was worth it,” Lila added.