When talking and writing about "Italians in Kenya," listeners and readers tend to imagine something that belongs to the past. If not to the last century, to the early millennium.
"When almost a hundred thousand a year were arriving," or "When there were the big tour operators and on the Kenyan coast there was no shortage of them," as well as "when Alitalia landed in Mombasa," and with what one earned in the "drinking" Italy of the 1980s, one made a fortune in Kenya.
Today, the discourse has changed not only in numbers, but in the type of the average traveler, so it is impossible that Kenya was not also affected by this genetic-migratory mutation.
So who are the "new Italians in Kenya"?
The current season, sanitized almost entirely of the dross of the pandemic, has proposed the reactivation of charter flights, which in fact rewards Alpitour and its branches, that is, the tour operator that owns the company NEOS, which organizes the only direct flight linking the two countries. During the Christmas holidays, four a week will arrive from Milan, two from Rome and one from Verona. A boon after two and a half years of total blockade. On the other hand, it is getting more expensive and complicated to get there by scheduled flights than before Covid. Ethiopian Airlines prides itself on having practically no competition, on Mombasa and, faced with the in any case obligatory price increase due to oil, taxes and past expenses to be written off, has raised its fares more. Turkish Airways has been promising for at least a year to fly back to Kenya's coastal city but still does not have the licenses and hijacks us "fall for it" to Nairobi, where connections are often not found.
Here is another problem faced by new Italians in Kenya: domestic connections that paradoxically instead of being more numerous and "smart" are fewer and fewer, increasingly expensive and problematic. While remaining true to the mantra "those who want to come to Kenya, eventually come," we must unfortunately note that the decline in arrivals is also the child of general disorganization, and not only of the travel industry.
On the other hand, one always hopes for a generational change, for the arrival of young people for whom making an online visa is about as difficult as squeezing a pimple and who, if they go into a supermarket, know how much a product costs in English and at the limit do not get pissed off if the waiter does not understand "I would like an al dente spaghetti without the onion soffritto."
Instead nothing, even this Christmas will confirm that the bulk of the new Italians in Kenya, will be old people. Of militancy but also among the newbies. Cocoon beats Coconut, Third Age conquering the (former) Third World. Fortunately, there is Watamu, where Italians in Kenya go international: they mix, mingle, exalt themselves and often make so many messes that they are recognized in the presence of all the other ethnic groups represented in the beautiful vacation resort.
What about Diani? Where do we put Diani? The long white beach has always been considered a "buen retiro" of those Italians who aspired not to be recognized nor to be considered compatriots of the Briatore-like VIPs or, on the other hand, pre-extradition fugitives. A paradise of consistency, Diani has remained so, although in the end even there a little more tourism, including Italian tourism, would benefit many.
And Nairobi? Where more and more professionals peep in to work in the pay of wealthy Kenyans and end up staying and perhaps setting up their own businesses? Then they come as tourists to the coast, but with that "citizen of the world" air of those who walk in and out of a different mall every day.
We are convinced that some "new Italians" will arrive in Kenya in the coming days. As has already happened to their peers, they will spend wonderful vacations, relax and enjoy this handkerchief of Africa that they will then think is a bedsheet that can cover the entire continent.
The biggest risk they can take is running into the "old Italians in Kenya" who just because they have been once (15 years ago) to the Tsavo, indeed to a camp just before Sala Gate, will claim to explain the savannah to them, or who will advise them to buy a house "because it is the right time."
The right time to sell him theirs.
In short, not easy even for the "new guy who lands" to get an objective view.
Old, new, young, old. Malindi, Watamu, Nairobi, Diani.
Nice it would be, as in other countries of the world, to see more travelers and fewer tourists, more Italians aware of where they have landed, humble, educated, respectful and with a desire to know, rather than amateurs on the ropes, beach fish ready to bite at every hook or amò, and new compatriots older than those who rode lobsters a few decades ago