The recovery of tourism on the Kenyan coast is under the eyes of all: attendance, up 40 percent compared to the same period last year speak for themselves.
Hands up those who expected such a prosperous summer season.
What brakes I am now the wounds not yet healed a few years ago when Malindi and Watamu overflowing with foreigners, of opportunities, of projects.
We have not yet returned to those levels and maybe we would not go back, because the world has changed, Europe and especially our country is enveloped in an economic crisis that appears as a blind alley not too comfortable (than the American suburbs , with the fumes of the manholes, garbage on the sides, a homeless man on the ground, two Puerto Rican drug dealers against the wall ...).
But knowing to live an age when it is better to sail in sight, in Africa as in the West, this year back to us hope, and already you are laying the foundation for next season that could herald a new springtime of the Kenyan coast .
Of course, if there were no obstacles it would not be fun, so we in the tourism sector are anxiously awaiting the upcoming national elections, scheduled for August 8, 2017.
We know that some scuffle of ethnic origin in the north of the country, would also affect about Malindi and surroundings, thanks to the diligence of the media.
We personally know some pseudo freelance journalists who have already booked the holiday in Kenya at that time, in the hope of being able to tell doomsday scenarios.
Imagine what a disappointment if they were in front of peaceful and exemplary elections, as long preach President Uhuru Kenyatta and some opposition leaders?
In reality, the elections could be the pretext for some minority (especially small boss of pastoralism of the remote northwest regions) to lift the ridge and receive benefits.
In any case, the costs (perhaps excluding Mombasa, which as the city remains a bit 'more "hot") as always will remain quiet and affable.
It might say that (in this case fortunately) we live a new chapter of the media age, what Pirandello when every news is potentially a hoax, and vice versa.
If you go to read the news of the attacks in Nairobi and Garissa a few years ago, the Cassandras paid internet condivano tested the Italian items escaping from dream locations of imminent threats even on the coast, the Islamic threats in resort etc.
Success Fucking, as would a militant of Al Shabaab in Oxford vacation.
So why believe a second time to these honorable and ungrammatical jackals?
Already they are initiated to glimpse of regret starting to write good things about a country that, beyond its atavistic contradictions and its many problems, is growing economically and socially as few others in Africa and the world. In recent days, both Corriere La Stampa that have pages dedicated to the wonders of Kenya, and not the usual lions and buffalo. Two articles on Hell's Kitchen Marafa that, with all respect, not would insert in the top ten wonders of this corner of paradise.
Good sign, though. Environmentalists speak of Kenya because it wants to abolish the plastic bags (and we in Italy, immersed in the garbage of Rome and Naples, we had never even thought of it), illustrate the wind farm projects in the desert, which occur alongside ultramodern railway Chinese take away that (hopefully) a bit 'of pulling the Nairobi-Mombasa and Lamu port which we hope in the end you never do, for the love of a beautiful archipelago that is coming back to life after years of obscurantism, even the above media.
The picture is not only optimistic, and we miss in a world where the balance is stopped for some time to a negative value, but it is also difficult to return, in these times of virtual chain letter on Facebook and blogghettari taken for Pulitzer prizes, to trust what you see.
Yet here on the shores of the Indian Ocean would be the case: people who starts to move on the Swahili coast for three or four months, back to thinking about home buying, selling everything in Italy and take the leap before the Italian ship sinking permanently or before the bank account empties itself, moreover while leading a life far away from their dreams.
It 's so: this season has been (and still is, at least until Easter) a launching pad.
Fears now are the same all over the world, and the future is greyed out everywhere. But at least here you live the present better.
And we, as has been happening since 2005, we are here to wait, to comment, to give some advice and to say "karibu".
And in the meantime, I assure you, we do not live it at all bad!