Kenya for Italians is not only the land of fantastic safaris, of relaxing holidays on white beaches, of a mild climate during the winter frost of the West, of well-being and hospitality. Kenya for many and many 'singles' (many still don't, because for now they risk jail at the very least) is the land of love.
A love often unexpected but not unexpected and more dreamed than dreamed.
There is no need for Valentine's Day to remind this kind of Italians that they are in love, because ever since they set foot in Kenya and particularly on the coast, the world is as sweet as chocolate and has the same colour.
The hearts of (an)alpha males beat like many of their girlfriends before they met them, that of beta(carotene) women instead of 'bum bum' goes 'bamboo'.
Joking aside, it's easy to make jokes about a tip of the iceberg (which by the way would have already melted at the equator) when instead there is a much more deep-rooted and long-lasting phenomenon: the phenomenon of her and him being 'different from everyone else'.
It cannot be ignored that for our countrymen and women, love encounters take place in a chaste, friendly, chatty manner and then turn into passion thanks to a sincere empathy, to the sharing of moments of two souls who have certainly found each other and in finding each other have broken down ethnic, linguistic, social and above all age barriers.
But let's go back to the whys: why does a middle-aged man (let's make it three quarters?), not exactly resembling Brad Pitt or at most Johnny Depp after an indigestion of chocolate, fall in love with an alleged student from northern Kenya temporarily on holiday on the coast or off course and looking for a little seasonal job?
The reason in our opinion is quickly explained. When in Italy do you ever go into a bar, order a beer, and in no time at all find a beautiful 20-year-old black girl, decently dressed, even if flashy, who asks you to make her acquaintance and without any ulterior motive shows interest in you? The first action that would come naturally is to look around to see where the pimp is hiding, where the catch is. Instead she is alone and asks you if you will invite her to dinner.
You spend an evening laughing and joking, with some difficulty with the language, but fortunately she knows a few words of Italian. Then the imponderable happens: she agrees to come up to your house to have a last drink. And she stays over! And you make love with sensuality, romance but also overwhelming excitement (yours) and excellent acting (hers). And at the end of the 'session' (darn the unexpected, not even time to buy the little blue pill) many kisses and cuddles and you fall asleep together. And months of love follow, with legitimate but never exorbitant requests from the girl: clothes and jewellery (after all, when you introduce her to envious friends, do you not want to adorn her with gold and expensive costume jewellery?) and then you get to think about a late marriage and head her off in your mother's house, who has unfortunately passed away.
No, in Italy, even if the pimp hadn't shown up at the bar, such an adventure would have ended with you drugged out of the last glass of brut and the house completely cleaned out, or with a fee request similar to the one Chiara Ferragni asked for her participation in the Sanremo Festival.
But no, the student even stops for breakfast and simply tells you if you will lend him a ridiculous amount of money to visit his sister in hospital and bring her flowers, which cost more than he had budgeted. Then, at your discretion, you can meet up again the same evening, with the prayer of taking her dancing...eh, of course she is twenty years old, but that makes you feel young, doesn't it?
Do you agree with us that in Italy these 'different from all the others' girls do not exist? And that if they do exist and they like old men, they choose them who are rich, formerly cool, or still attractive.
The women, as always, are much smarter, even if they are Italian in Kenya (where the sun beats down on their heads and the tanning sessions have their reasons). They know very well that 'he is no different from all the others' and indeed, they are looking for him just like others who have hooked up with their girlfriends or acquaintances! And who have made them suffer like octopuses caught on a reef! Because love, the real kind, is a sweet pain, a penetrating, enormous emotion that at best can cause independence or satisfy the maternal instinct, at worst cause procto-rectal syndromes.
We joke, because on Valentine's Day in Kenya there are hundreds of mixed couples celebrating and still loving each other after years of relationship, plus those who have started families (and helped nurture others). We always tell extreme stories, isolated examples of which one can be ironic, because in the end nothing is a drama. As the poet-lawyer Paolo Conte sings (which, especially in Malindi and Watamu, there is always a need... of lawyers I mean, that poetry is already a wonderful place) at the end, for him and for her, the impression remains of having gambled and having been paid in illusions if one has won, or having lost material goods if one has lost.  Everything else 'Explains something, maybe just, some words sound like weeping. They are salty, they taste of the sea. Who knows between us, it was about love'.