A new season has begun for Italian tourism in Kenya, and there are already those who point the finger at Malindi, 'a destination for sex tourism'. Yes, but things have changed this year! Because for some months now, any man on holiday on the shores of the Indian Ocean, especially if a little older, feels protected, backed up, if not proud to date local girls. 
Ever since he learned that a 74-year-old man who invites a 17-year-old girl to his house and spends the evening with her is a virtuous man and never a paedophile (and that's fair enough.... the girl at seventeen is quite capable of understanding and wanting), that the little parties with orgy are actually "subversive designs of the left", he walks lightly along Lamu Road and enters the discos that light up with music, cocktails and smiles with the air of someone who carries high the honour of his country. 
Since he has discovered that an old man who still wants to feel like a playboy, fills a girl with money to sneak her into the bed of one of the most important buildings in Italy, it seems to him all too honest to let his evening conquest into the tourist village that does not accept strangers, by handing her over to the night porter.
Then he heard that no one should be allowed to intrude into the private life of a human being, that he cannot ruin their reputation at will. To hell with those journalists who seek scandal at all costs! Even here in Malindi, with those investigations that come to explain that the sun is shining and the sea is wet. From what world and world we like women, preferably young ones!
"All the more so because I have even more courage than that important old man,' thinks the retired tourist to himself.
"Because I've fallen in love and I'm not afraid to say so!".
It all happened the first evening he arrived in Malindi.
After dinner, attracted by the repetitive rhythm of dance music, like an Indian fakir with a flute, he had entered the disco-pub with a great desire to disco-pare...er...to snoop around.
He had wandered between the bar and the dance floor admiring those ebony beauties who were dancing in a screaming manner, he had even dared to do a few rumba steps and ordered a caipirinha.
Suddenly a beautiful African queen, with the feline look of a panther and the sinuous shape of a gazelle, got up from her stool and came towards him.
"You, beautiful mzungu."
"Who, me?" he had looked around, to see if there wasn't a handsome, well-dressed young man right behind him.
With a conditioned reflex, however, he had adjusted his shirt collar Tony Manero style.
No, the panther was looking right at him, with magical eyes of conquest.
"Will you dance with me?"
He felt transported back to the junior high party, when the prettiest girl in the class had asked him to a tile dance, and it wasn't until the next day that he'd learned it was for a bet with her friends. Won.
But what bet could this be?
A prank by a prankster compatriot? 
A trap set by a nosy left-wing journalist?
Who knows, she didn't feel like asking. 
He danced, he rubbed himself, he hugged her.
To hell with subversive drawings.
Who knows if it was the heat, the plane ride, the disco-pub's millelights, the caipirinha...
He was visibly pissed off.
But she was eating him up with her eyes! 
He fell in love instantly and blessed those viagra pills his pharmacist friend in the country had given him: "Go to Africa, Celestino...! Be a lion for once in your life!".
The lion... actually, his heart was now beating like that of a robin.
It was a wonderful night for him.
She, on the other hand, as she embraced him gently and let the rising dawn caress her between the sheets, found in him that confidant he so obviously needed, that father figure who would understand his problems.
And what problems! A younger sister who absolutely had to finish her studies in order to help the family with her salary as a company secretary, a very sick mother who would have had to emigrate to Johannesburg to have surgery and return to a normal life, a brother who had been drafted into the army and died during the clashes the year before, leaving three children to support. 
He wept and felt very close to his President's tears during the days of the Abruzzo earthquake. He felt he had a lot in common with that man, and he was not sure if that was a good thing.
He would help her, he promised her hieratically as if he were speaking to the Italian people.
"This is what love is all about, being capable of all kinds of feelings, from deep altruism to physical transportation".
She drew back, wiped her tears with the sheet and, shielded from his gaze, smiled. 
Then she turned softly and straddled him again, mentally and mechanically repeating that wonderful Italian word her friend Janet had taught her: 'Reversibility'.
When the day dawned on them, before a restful and proper sleep that would last until lunchtime, he had a flash. 
He gave her a new look, like an irreproachable lover. 
For the first time he looked hard and unshakable even to himself.
"I ask only one thing of you," he said, and his voice was firm and unyielding.
"Please don't ever, ever call me PAPI."