Love yourself the way you love a foreign tourist

By Ted Malanda

Kenya: It is a picture that appears in your newspaper time and again — skimpily dressed female traditional dancers shaking their ‘fundamendos’ for foreign tourists at airports in Mombasa and Nairobi.

As always, they smile sweetly as they dance, spreading so much warmth that the winter chill is thawed out of the coldest foreign tourist’s heart. It is usually such a shock that the wazungu smile back and join in the traditional dance comically, the way a girl born and raised in my village would waltz.

From the airport, we whisk them to a hotel, where staff in starched uniforms and broad smiles say ‘karibu’ with a glass of chilled fruit juice — fresh, of course.

 As a rule, hotels meant for tourists are beautiful, the linen clean, the kitchen spotless, the chef trained, the security tight and all the staff pretty, handsome and so polite it is frightening.

We ensure to serve the best meats, the freshest vegetables and bread, in places that are airy, nicely landscaped and so beautiful they make you want to fall in love.

We do everything in our power to make tourists feel at home, smiling all the time, so that when they leave, they always itch to return, saying, “I love Kenya — the people are just awesome!”

What the tourists don’t understand is that they live in another world, one most Kenyans never venture into.

Kenyans are anything but warm. We are rude, foul-mouthed, selfish, and sweaty and we will swipe your wallet at the slightest opportunity.

Shifty eyed

Last weekend, I met a young white woman who had ventured into the world our world. We were waiting for a matatu at the Bomas of Kenya junction when two shifty eyed characters pulled to a stop in noisy piece of junk that had just come out of a garage.

“Kila stage ni 70 (Sh70 for all stops),” the conductor yelled.

A kilometre down the road, an argument ensued between the white woman and the conductor. She knew the bus fare should be Sh30, had not understood that ‘Kila stage ni 70’ nonsense.

So she was protesting at the top of her voice and the conductor was telling her in broken English and three local languages that she is a stupid woman.

The long and short of it is that she was thrown out, quite rudely. She will not be saying, “Ooh, I love Kenya — the people are so warm,” and such rubbish.

She got a taste of our medicine and discovered that in true African tradition, we reserve the choice parts of the chicken for visitors, but leave the neck, gnarled feet and intestines for wenyenchi.

The lodgings we build for Kenyans are dirty, the food oily, burnt and recycled, the drinking water toxic, the toilets fetid, the bed sheets and towels crawling with vermin and the staff untrained, underpaid and extremely moody.

If you dream that you will step out of your third hand Japanese import at ‘Hilltop Villa Inn and Guesthouse’ and find traditional dancers dancing isukuti and smiling staff waiting with white face towels, get your head examined.