The return of Beppe Grillo, and a clarification of Flavio Briatore (which you can read here) were enough to put Malindi again on the first pages of the newspapers. The "usual" Malindi, one of which we were perhaps forgotten.
Which? That under the sun of clichés, in the ocean of morality, on the shore of exploitation, prostitution, the Italian rich people who make the good life in the face of the poor.
Yes, because those who know her and attended, and unfortunately or fortunately still has to do with Italy and its bad journalism class knows that has always interested it Malindi, newsworthy, is unbecoming of the news, VIP caught in the act, or that of current events.
That if one is robbed in Saronno, is no longer even news.
But if they steal the portfolio in Kilifi, it is likely to pass in all the newscasts.
And then there is always the threat of Somali terrorism that is here around the corner if a little 'farther than to Milan from Nice.
Yet there is no doubt that it is good thing that has come to talk of Malindi, after a few years in which the envoys of large newspapers (on disarmament) landed on the coast of Kenya in mid-May to tell about how there was no longer tourism (and when ever, during the rainy season?) and every time the goals were appointed on the shores of the Indian Ocean, were precisely evoked specters of terrorism, fundamentalism ghosts, monsters of fundamentalism and other legendary creatures which certainly exist but which in Malindi and surroundings has only ever read.
Malindi back to fill the pages of newspapers and to be clicked into topical sites, travel and, invariably, gossip.
Nothing new, so accustomed were there when Kenya pulled, when in fact Italy was pulling a living better than now and throughout the international tourism sector earned it.
Remember well the raids of the paparazzi of the biggest gossips magazines including White Elephant and Paparemo Beach looking for this or that famous, the politician who lost the diamond ring into the sea, in the handsome actor's marriage crisis, the Formula One driver a friend of Briatore that collides with the private jet of Malindi airport.
It was the early company in the world, Facebook was not the protagonist of our lives, but judgments about Malindi fell into two: those who knew her only through the media and s'indignavano for the parades of the rich, of Vip , parliamentarians and began to dream of going there imagining a Porto Cervo winter in the warmth, and those who already frequented by the time and knew that worldliness and Italy at are just the tip of the iceberg, and that everything around the swimming coast live the wonder, spells and contradictions of Mama Africa.
And even then the fanatics of prepackaged banality spoke of a Malindi rich (and then, however, betray himself when they said that "the lobsters cost 5 Euros as at Montecitorio") and a place where you preach well and badly scratching.
As opposed to our country, which today seeks shit preached and even scratching worse.
But we have made the call, it will be because we walk barefoot?
For thirty years these parts tourism in Malindi has experienced its ups and downs. Ryszard Kapuscinski said that the fruit rots on the ground to generate other sweeter fruit in Africa.
At the end of the eighties, as the exclusive radical chic freak goal that oozed of adventure and freedom, tour operators and the first fashionistas villages-animation they made it a destination for everyone.
The boom lasted four years, an epic unrepeatable where passing simultaneously small families with children and pedophiles in search, pop stars and international wanted, Series B writers, and children in Serie A, accountants fleeing from the past and young people fleeing from the future.
Italians opened and closed in restaurants, boutique joy, casinos, beaches, franchising hairdressers, nightclub with karaoke, safari agencies and diving.
In the villages of Francorosso, Fan, Large Travel & company the entertainers were named Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo, Job Covatta, Paolo Rossi. There was a recording studio where they were to affect Sugar, Albano, Vandelli Equipe 84. In Italy there was talk of Edoardo Agnelli arrested, Claudio Martelli blunted, Anna Falchi topless and Craxi dolphins in forced exile.
From dream place, Malindi was beginning to become a spectacular cliché: African poor were increasingly exploited, the girls constantly raped, the only edible food was the lobster and the lack of water that disidratava Kenyans was averted with rivers Champagne.
The Agnelli vindictive denigrated, the moralists exorcised, the business of charities they did flag. But (perhaps for this reason) people continued to arrive.
They took the civil strife in Somalia and the Arab threat after the Gulf War to sweep the enclave more diverse, more free, more absurd and more fun than it was created by the Italian on the globe.
It took three years to recover.
Some of those who returned to their homeland if they were or had gone exploring other tropical oasis, did set in again. Other landed for the first time and bought two pounds that had been left by those who had gone on.
There were high hopes, magical prospects because to Malinditalia margins grew two marinas actually be discovered: Watamu and Mambrui.
From the mass tourism of the villages, exhausted bubbles of the eighties and nineties, passed to mass residential tourism, the logic of the timeshare and beach bungalows at 20,000 Euros.
The wife of a prime minister who had interests in Santo Domingo was smearing, the moralists were returning to throw holy water on him, the associations for the rights of the minor equated to Bangkok and to the Brazilian favelas.
And always for the same reasons, people resumed to land.
When it was already on the launch pad, an attack in Mombasa and one in Nairobi they put back on his knees Tourism on the Kenyan coast. The curious note is that the parts of Malindi in all that time had never happened. Some robbery, a couple of toxic arrested, two tourists on the trajectory of as many bullets. Stuff that even in the quiet village of Val D'Aosta (type, I know, Cogne ...)
Who was already the third coming and going, starting to get over it.
This is Africa and especially "That is Italy"
It vivacchiava, waiting again a good time to raise it permanently.
Meanwhile the Sept. 11 made it clear that the global fear was not the stuff of the third world, from deserts and oil wells. Africa is no longer afraid to New York and there is much more to deal with, that of a handful of Italians who have for years held the reins of the economy of a tourist area of ​​Kenya, feeding thousands of people and turning many of their mud huts in houses just above the level of decency.
Among the general silence of the media, here go the boom years!
In 2005 the clubs on beaches housed a thousand people a night, in 2006 entry visas of Italian brushed hundred thousand share, in 2007 owned by Italians houses and villas were more than three thousand. And here are the infamous post-election disaster in the north of the country, which again squeeze and empty mayonnaise tubes as the Kenyan resorts.
At this point on the bandwagon of detractors had climbed all: professionals terror, the telegiornalisti vaudeville, opinion formers drawing-room and the first people of blogs and social forums.
The last attempts of recovery in the middle with the attack on the Westgate shopping center in Nairobi (even a raudo erupted in Malindi) and the much more terrible and media at the University of Garissa (on the coast, as always, all quiet) is useless speak. Thousands of virtual torchlight, hundreds of cell phones and dozens of superficial reportage indignation have already done so. Just pretty much read everything upside down and you're done.
So, dear journalists, politicians factious, professionals of social, editorialists barber, well spoken of Grillo and Briatore, resume blather that this is a place of Riley lavasoldi.
But do not you dare to talk about new boom in Malindi, who knows me that well in bad faith, you are also such a jinxes!