Vera Sidika saved millions from the first man who showered her with gifts and money.
The man, who was single at the time of the relationship, was her first and only sponsor.
Vera defended her decision to date the older man saying, “He was in a situation where he was divorced, he was also older than me. He treated me so well and did a lot of thing for me but he did not like the fact that I was in the modelling industry and hustling here and there working.”
“I was also living very far from him, on Thika Road, which was near Kenyatta University. So it got to a point where he said, ‘As my girlfriend, I want to help you’,” she said in an interview with a Tanzanian media house.
The socialite-turned-businessperson narrated how they met.
“It has been an interesting journey. I left Mombasa for Nairobi. It is a big city and the culture is different from that in Mombasa. Life is fast paced. I joined the modelling industry as I studied at Kenyatta University. During the holidays, I would go back to Mombasa. At the time there were beach parties.
“At one of the parties there was a man who loved me. We talked, he liked me and we kept in touch. He lived in Nairobi at the time, I did not know that he was a prominent businessman.”
Vera said the businessman was besotted and showered her with expensive gifts. “That is normal, he gave me money. A lot of it. You cannot have a rich and successful man and you are looking jaded and broke. He would give me money for shopping. To say the truth, I had never seen [so much money] in my entire life! He would give me money and it would shock me.
“After two or three week of him showering me with gifts and money, I thought to myself, ‘This is money I’m not used to getting. I have to start saving.’ I dated him for one and a half years. Every Friday, for all those years, I would go to the bank and deposit the money he had given me.”
The romance eventually fizzled out and Vera had some tough decisions to make. “If I was stupid and afraid of what my classmates would say about me, I would have spent all the money I had saved to maintain that lifestyle, but I did not. I moved from the posh apartment to a middle-class neigbourhood and started [taking] a matatu to school. But I knew that I had saved my millions from that relationship.”
Vera owns a beauty parlour in Westlands.