FREDDIE'S CORNER
31-03-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
The layman says that in Kenya one Easter is as good as another, that as always the sun rises at 6.21am and sets at 6.26pm, the saints of the weekend are Friday (a Bantu relative) and a certain L. Dell'Angelo.
In Malindi and Watamu, however, there is a disproportionate difference between High and Low Easter.
It is not a question of anticipating the resurrection of Jesus, also because in these parts we have no problem waiting for anything.
The 'pole pole' Easter simply goes out of season and hardly anyone takes advantage of it to have a little holiday on the Kenyan coast, while the 'haraka haraka' Easter may provide a last good spark to pay the severance pay of hundreds of seasonal workers.
In other Mediterranean destinations or in the Red Sea, hoping that the Houthi troublemakers do not start taking up tourism, it will soon be warm and the offers for a week's holiday are equivalent to the price of a one-way train ticket from Sesto Calende to Bassano del Grappa and are absolutely competitive with Kenya in April.
In Kenya, on the other hand, after the low Easter, there is a risk of rain, an air of demobilisation that puts one in a melancholic mood and, above all, there are many residents who can't take it anymore and are looking forward to enjoying their well-deserved holidays.
An African safari, above all.
But some chronically ill people also dream of shopping in Via Veneto or Sunday at the shopping centre or Ikea.
So on the coast, High Easter is a real bummer, better like this year, to close up shop at the end of March!
A few years ago, before the pandemic, for example, Low Easter even happened in mid-March. Fellow holidaymakers overflowed, the beach in Silversand boasted a good density of beach-boys per tourist, the many restaurants only accepted customers by reservation, the fish vendors turned into pushers, for a sniff of lobster they would ask you what in November is enough to buy two kilos.
House sellers were easily getting rid of old villas, auctioning off modern flats and promising, after a juicy down payment, every single concrete pour on Kenyan land. Golden business for the interior decorators, boutiques, antique dealers, greengrocers and body shops.
Safari minibuses whizzed by every morning to national parks and then queued up in the heart of Africa so much so that lions wondered if it wouldn't have been better to be born a tollbooth, rented cars and taxis filled the streets with healthy smog absorbed by baobabs in secular abstinence and at night the discos were beehives full of honey (more than acacia, armpit) and human jams.
Dancing were the V.I.P.'s who after hours of total screen sun (if there's no screen somewhere, they don't live) indulged in aperitifs at the Biennale d'Arte Contemporanea, amidst the tips of a Naomi Campbell and the selfies of the influencers of the season.
Africa acted as a backdrop, romantic fascinating exotic mysterious eerie heavenly relaxing intrusive depending on the mood and state of mind.
For the Italian residents that brothel meant 'hay in the farmyard', for the Kenyans that brothel meant 'grab while you can'.
The following year, here is Easter as far as you can get: the sun is desperately looking for a tourist at midday to cast its perpendicular shadow, the few holidaymakers feel disoriented, inadequate, out of catalogue and context. As bewildered as a catamaran in a heliport, they wander in search of a ball-breaking entertainer, a beach-boy to cheat them, a marijuana dealer to inform the police, to finally feel on holiday.
Watamu's beach looks like a Palermo street course five minutes before a murder-for-hire, restaurants greet customers like cousins from Europe whose visit they have been waiting for for twenty years, fish vendors cycle past throwing lobsters into the diner as if they were copies of the Daily Nation and picking up cents left on stones at the entrance. The house sellers get drunk and throw lonely parties every night in a different villa, choosing from those returned after the first installment, renting the modern flats left empty to Indian families and preventing every single concrete pour on the Kenyan land. Furnishers rest, boutiques close, antique dealers sell out, greengrocers go out of business, and corpivendolas switch from disco jumping to end-of-season sales. Italian residents have the smiles of those who are smoking some of their hay every day.
All right, I've gone too far, I got carried away. All in all, it has been a wonderful, record-breaking season.
We are all looking forward to the resurrection! Nooo, not our Lord's for once...that of the Kenyan coast, starting in July: the important thing is not to finish, as Mina sang, but to come, as my father assured us.
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