At every start of the tourist season, those who live in Kenya and are not Kenyans, and thanks to the internet and social media also have the good fortune to read Italian websites and blogs, are accustomed to reading clichés, rubbish and terrorising articles about holidays in Africa.Among the many misinformation campaigns and artful inflations, viruses, infections and tropical diseases often make the front page. Health hazards always click happily and give visibility.
In Sub-Saharan Africa we have malaria, but it seems that the new generations consider it a ‘boomer’ disease, outdated, so much so that even prophylaxis is no longer much believed in, especially for those who always thought it was a special contraceptive so as not to catch other viruses from the young ladies they met in tourist resorts and disguised as students.

Malaria is out of fashion, then, with what else can the tourist be frightened?
Until a few years ago there was the bogeyman of Ebola, but in the end it was clear that you had to go and look for it in remote places between the Ruwenzori and the Congolese rebels. Of course, coming back from Kenya with Ebola could be a source of pride, the kind that makes you tell your friends: ‘I'm a real traveller, not someone who goes on a stupid holiday. I live places in my blood!’

Then there was the hunt by our compatriots to become the first patient with the Marburg virus, the outbreak of which is among the gorillas of Uganda. Safari bookings in Ngorongoro have increased dramatically, so much so that some are thinking of importing it to Nakuru.
Then came the passing fevers and viral forms that no longer make the headlines, ‘Zica’ for a time was more popular than Pilates, Dengue has faded like Merengue, and it didn't even make you dance as you melted into shit.

What can terrorists come up with today that would rather have you spend a minus-twenty winter on the slopes of Cortina or seek the mild temperature in the warmth of the lava flows of Etna or Vesuvius?
For some, the solution is to go back to the classics: cholera, typhus and paratyphus (always less classic than the ass-paracinth binomial) and salmonellosis, which brings to mind the meatloaf gone bad from primary school refectories (have they been exhumed from the Mattei Plan?).

Or go for the still-popular fashion of sushi and sashimi, which leads to eating raw fish on the beach in Watamu, recommended by a beach-boy who stands there waiting for the tourist, with a fake cooler (some even have ‘cooler bags’) in which you happen to find groupers, prawns and lobsters. The lobsters, of course, have been frozen and thawed at least three times, the grouper, on the other hand, was caught the day before and has done six hours in the equatorial sun that not even the accountant's wife next door in the resort, despite having the same colour and the same intelligent look.

The shrimps come from Lamu and from the look of them you would think they had arrived on foot, on their own.
In this case the salmonella is almost a bonus and the meatloaf a rogue nostalgia.
Death by poisoning after unspeakable spasms, instant melting in faecal solution or voluntary drowning beyond the sixth reef would have been a more fitting epilogue to the experience.

For vegans and those who do not like crudités, we instead recommend the street vendors of homemade ice creams and those of popsicles in plastic bags. The latter are increasingly rare, but in the alleys of old coastal towns or at matatu stops in rural villages, they can still be found. Ice made from rainwater and Arabic dyes create a cocktail of bacteria that hepatitis itself is afraid to show up there.

Otherwise, play it safe with tap water. Although it does less damage than that of the Italian state railways, drinking it by the gargantuan gargantuan can still collect typhoid, amoeba, diphtheria and giardia, the most prized item.

For those who like to travel with a sick imagination, there is the effective and fast African Elicobapter, a bacterium that is a little bit astronaut, a little bit gastrointestinal and a little bit gastronzo, which glides like a Hercules C130 straight into the mzungu's stomach and reduces it like the road to Amboseli during the rainy season.
The sensation is more or less what the sight of an 80-year-old German woman in a bikini arm in arm with a handsome maasai causes: nausea, dizziness and in some cases vomiting.

Also annoying is the "Matatubapter", a virus you catch from armpits crammed into a few square metres and capable of transforming in half an hour your breath into the exhaust gas of a bodaboda, your sweat into rotten avocado, and your skin colouring similar to the Arab buildings behind the old market in Malindi.
Don't be terrified, for the jinx there is health insurance (that you need to get it hardly anyone writes about it, otherwise what news would you give them to click?), for everything else, bimixin and previously clean toilet paper.

Yes, because coming back from Kenya without a single bacterium means not having fully experienced the equator, like never having been there. How would that look? It is no coincidence that certain selfies from Kenya look like they were taken by someone who is not only holding their breath, but something else as well....
Because the real Africa sickness, after all, is just a big intestinal ache.