Long gone are the days when, when one decided to travel to a foreign country, perhaps very distant geographically and from one's own habits, one would document oneself through books, films and by consulting encyclopaedic atlases (who can remember the mythical 'De Agostini') and, since the early 1980s, international guidebooks such as Lonely Planet and Routard.

Then, when one was certain that this was the right destination, the country to see, the dream to realise, there was the final act: the opinion of the expert, or rather the travel agent.
Back then, Italy was a country of people who were more humble than arrogant, more respectful of the skills and knowledge of others and less 'know-it-all'. In bookshops, music shops, even hardware and trimmings shops, one could find experts and enthusiasts of their trade, who usually guided the customer to the best choice, between quality and price.
Of course, we don't want to sugarcoat the past as just any old boomers, even back then there were scoundrels, fraudsters, those who were 'ahead' and those who put their own interests before service, but at least it was not a legalised modus operandi and only one person responded to any malpractice, the one who put his face in front of the payer and not a telephone switchboard, an internet chat or the underpaid employee of a multinational.

Why this boring, barbaric premise?
As those who read us know well, and those who have been frequenting us for a while will learn, if they feel like it, one of our occupations, as the 'portal of Italians in Kenya' with all its media and social ramifications, is to respond to requests for information, advice, concerns or desires to be realised on the subject of a holiday in Kenya (if not a relocation, an investment or whatever).
A dirty job, but someone has to do it (cit.)

With the approach of the tourist seasons, the western one from July to September and then the tropical one from December to March, questions are flooding in waiting for serious, precise or at least sensible answers.
Today, however, you no longer buy books, nor do you go and chat with a trader who then perhaps even becomes your friend and it is he who will propose your next destination. No, today we are IAUs, human artificial intelligences, and we find out everything on the Internet, without caring much if the source is a site that wants to sell us plane tickets, suntan creams, scares, hotels or discount vouchers for a beauty parlour in Rovigo.

More and more frequently, precisely in order to avoid running into deviant or mediocre information, the people of unheroic surfers and travellers, search on social networks for pages and groups that may be right for them.
Thus they come across dozens and dozens of spaces in every corner of the planet, especially on Facebook, which remains the office of public chats and rants (which often lead to controversy and quarrels, but so what...).
As for Kenya, for instance, it is full of bushes and clearings for keyboard lions in the boundless savannah of Facebook. Almost all of them belong to those whose purpose, declared or not, is to sell safaris, accommodation, bed-and-breakfasts, wedding rings or whatever.
It is not so much these spaces or their administrators (not all of them 'keyboard hyenas') that are of concern, for the approach or final choice of the traveller interested in Kenya, but those who write in them and are not properly 'moderated', if not censored.
It is that category of 'bad teachers' who have often never even managed to be 'students' of the land of Africa, as they have little understanding of where they were and have only experienced it as a projection of their needs, frustrations or personal passions, conceding little to the place they were staying, its people and traditions.
In this case, 'bad teachers' turn into 'bad travel agents' who, like the weather, can change the fate of a holiday or at least the mood of those who encounter them.
Usually the 'advisors' from social media, divide themselves into categories.
Let's look at some of them.

ITALIANS AUMM AUMM
It's not that they 'know it all' like the all-knowers, but they 'know how it's done'. Not so much because this is the way it has to be done in Kenya, but because they have always done it that way and they think it is the most convenient, the easiest, the most useful, and in the end, why not, the right way. And then there is the great advantage of being able to complain about it.
So why give up packing a leg of ham, a drone, ten kilos of Lavazza coffee, if all you have to do is put 10 euros in your passport?
There are those who advise you to do the same for any possible dispute with police officers (but why should you have problems with the police...) and at the same time advise you to stay away from Kenyans because they are only good for asking for money. I wonder who taught him that?
Anyway, as the keyboard warthogs who chew on Kenya like it's a miraa root write, "if you don't tip everyone, you can't do anything" and "just pay up and you get everything in Kenya".

DIVERTED INFORMANTS
It may be the climate change of travelling from the Tropic of Cancer to the equator, it may be the atavistic Italian inability to learn foreign languages, or simply that Kenya is such a welcoming country that it accepts everyone, but really everyone.
The unbelievable thing is that there is a herd of buffaloes and hoaxes (hoax producers, above all) from the keyboard who, while continuing to do the same crap, perhaps to feel less lonely (the buffalo notoriously likes to remain in a herd) publicise it and sell it as unimpeachable advice.
How can you trust a compatriot who claims to have been going to Watamu for 20 years and still suggests not doing the visa online, saying it can be done safely at the airport on arrival, with a 20 euro tip?
Or the one that recommends relying on a very good local guy called 'Stamp' (because he's always sticking to you and never leaves you, what a beauty!) for every single aspect of your stay in Kenya, from changing money to excursions, from buying souvenirs to safaris, from solidarity to choosing the best restaurant. We could continue with the purchase of land or property, lists of 'reliable Italians' and those of partners to approach or avoid.
Always bearing in mind that for them Watamu or Malindi represent the whole country, just as for a German Riccione should also contain the merits and demerits of Rome, Palermo, Milan and Udine, and the welcome or even the shrewd helpfulness of the Romagnoli be the same as the suburbs of Naples or Turin.

DEMORALISING ITALIANS
Another fierce group of 'bad agents' who depopulate the pages that are supposed to invite Italians to Kenya, are those who have taken a bitter disappointment from their stay at the equator, and now vent like a eunuch elephant excluded from the herd. These are especially the men and women who, to paraphrase Massimo Troisi, 'thought it was love and instead it was a crocodile' or those who trusted and entrusted themselves to the wrong people, either through carelessness or that notorious glare of the African sun that makes the latent douchebagry in all of us blossom and flourish.
They are the first to answer the virginity of simple and, if you like, naive questions of those about to book Kenya.
"Good morning everyone, I am thinking of a holiday in Kenya, what month is the sea best?"
Response from the keyboard elephant eunuch: "Forget Kenya, the sea is shit in any season: go to Hurgada or the Maldives if you want nice sea."
Or
"Is it safe to take my 5 and 9 year old children on safari?"
Answer: 'Nothing is safe in Kenya anymore, kidnappings are the order of the day and children in the bush risk getting malaria'.

AFRICA EXPERTS
We have already mentioned those who may even have lived in Kenya, in Malindi to be precise, for more than the canonical six months with a tourist visa (then renewed it by artisanal methods, but that's another topic) without ever having gone further than Watamu in the south and Mambrui in the north.
Hidden among them are experts not only of the country that kindly hosted them, but of the entire African continent! Cultured keyboard baboons who step in to have their say in any discussion that rises a little higher than normal. They can tell you where to sleep in Amboseli Park, which restaurant to dine in in Kisumu or how to approach Samburu herders. It is a real mission of theirs to make others believe that they have toured Africa in every nook and cranny and know it inside out.
Except that they do not distinguish Zambia from the Democratic Republic of Congo and say there is still yellow fever in Kenya.

The Kenyan jungle is much thicker and more varied than that at the foot of the Ruwenzori, between Uganda and Rwanda. The big limitation of the Italians, we have said it many times, is that they do not know English, because at the very least, by searching for credible information in other international or Kenyan spaces, one would get rid of all the solons of Malindi and Watamu.
Fortunately, there are also serious people who, even if they don't often insert themselves into conversations or spout gratuitous judgments, can be questioned because their love for the country they have chosen to live and work in and their intellectual honesty are superior to any self-interest, animosity or who knows what other mental distortion that Africa, unfortunately, has failed to heal.