'The white-man was bewitched to leave' beach boy says of dwindling tourist numbers

Diani Beach. (Photo: Courtesy)

Tourists have disappeared from the entire stretch of the Diani Beach, wiping off any trace of happiness from the face of Muhammad Hamisi.

His life is like riding the tidal-wave of the country’s capricious hospitality sector, the heartbeat of the South Coast economy. When bookings into the string of luxury hotels and resorts along this shoreline slow down, Hamisi’s heart and home sinks as well.

For the last 10 years, Hamisi, a beach boy, has dedicatedly walked these shores, scavenging for tourists in need of any guidance. There were days, like five years ago, when such tourists were many.

Today, all he sees around are old men and women, mostly of Caucasian extract, popularly known as ‘wazungu’ who have been here several times and care less for beach boys. Most spend the whole day between the hotel and beach chair, tanning their skins or listlessly going through their phones or reading.

It is a painful sight for Hamisi.

Generally, the South Coast, including a huge fraction of the village in Ukunda where Hamisi comes from, is kept alive by a constant flow of tourists, mostly from Europe.

For Leisure Lodge, where Vision 2030 Secretariat team stayed for three days as they made a tour of two flagship projects -- Base Titanium’s Kwale Mines site and the construction of Dongo Kundu bypass -- the visitors are mostly Germans.

Other than hotels and resorts, other economic activities that young folks such as Hamisi engage in here include collecting and selling cowrie shells, selling paintings and sculptures to tourists, or simply being hired by hotels to entertain guests.

Even for those whose trade appears as though remotely related to hospitality, for example fishing, a kill is made when the hotels are fully booked.

“What work are you talking about?” says Hamisi when I ask him about work. “There is no work here,” he says. And pointing towards Leisure Lodge, he adds: “There are no new white tourists here, the only ones here are repeaters.”

Repeaters, he says, are less likely to procure his services. After all, being habitual visitors, they believe they have seen all that is there to be seen.

They know all the crevices on this shore, beautifully curved by the surging force of the ocean as it rises and pounds against the cliff with anger.

Their knowledge of the sea creatures, left behind by a receding tide, is perhaps superior to Hamisi’s rudimentary knowledge of sea creatures which seems limited to crabs, octopus, sea urchins and sea cucumber.

Kept them afloat

Leisure Lodge Resident Manager Martin Mburugu, agreed that most of the hotel guests then were repeaters who have been there 30, 40 or even 60 times.

“At least the ones who are here are not concerned about the political upheaval in the country. They just come for the beach where they know they are safe,” said Mburugu.

A Leisure Lodge waitstaff who did not tell us his name said conferences and visits from different Government agencies had kept them afloat. In the last one month, he noted, they had 13 such visits.

At least the restaurants have something to get them going. Unlike other times, no crumbs have fallen on Hamisi’s way from such visits. This has left scores of youth idle, an easy prey to drug traffickers and Islamic fundamentalists.

“These repeaters, you stay with them for two weeks, they tell you: “I have bought everything. What can you show me?

“I have gone for boat-riding, gone to the reef; I have bought every sculpture you can think of, I have gone for Safari like 20 times. I have done a lot of work in Europe, now I am just relaxing.”

So, rather than selling his services, Hamisi now markets his misery to anyone who cares to hear that the unending political uncertainty and insecurity has ruined the tourism sector, leaving him at the cusp of destitution.

And it might as well be that poverty, more than his vocation, that is his biggest earner. He says the most money he has ever had at once is Sh50,000. The cash, he says, came from a ‘mzungu,’ not as payment for the services he had offered him but out of sympathy. 

“There is a time he asked me to take him where I lived,” he says. “When he got to my home, he found that my mother, elder sister and I were all crammed up in a single room,” he says of his home in Ukunda village, which is a few minutes’ drive from Ukunda Airstrip.

“He was really touched by my plight. He promised to send me some cash to upgrade my home as soon as he went back to Europe,” he remembers. When the money came in, he added an extra room, still mud-walled and thatched with makuti.

But now, politics and insecurity have colluded to drive away the last of such generous tourists from this beach.

“I can’t say I am for this political candidate or the other. For me, what is really important is that whoever is elected is our President. I don’t want to say, ‘I want this one or that one,’ I might end up being killed for nothing,” he says.

“Whoever emerges winner, we are grateful. A peaceful election attracts visitors. Because, you know, these visitors don’t come for political reasons. And when they don’t come fearing for violence, people like us lose out,” he explains.

Vision 2030 Board Secretariat Chairman James Mwangi, who accompanied the Vision 2030 delegation, said sensitivity to political uncertainty and security threats has seen performance of tourism industry, especially in the South-coast fall drastically after last 30 years.

“We need to focus on these major threats to propel this country forward,” said Mwangi who is also the CEO of Equity Bank. He estimated that revenues from tourist arrivals in the South coast had fallen from Sh530 million to Sh360 million a month.  

Vision 2030 Board Secretariat Director General Dr Julius Muia, said a study they had done found that compared to the other sectors, tourism would contribute significantly to the country’s long-term development. Unfortunately, he said, its growth so far has been anything but impressive.

Earnings improved

True, tourism numbers picked up in 2016 after months of a lull during which the terrorist group Al Shabaab spread fear in parts of the country with its sporadic attacks, particularly at the Coast and North Eastern Kenya. 

Data from the Kenya Tourism Board (KTB) indicated that the tourism sector earnings improved to Sh99.7 billion in 2016 compared to Sh84.6 billion in 2015, translating to an increase of 17.8 per cent.

The gains were largely attributed to improved security and successful conference tourism in 2016, said the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).

“The sector benefited from aggressive marketing in the domestic and international markets,” explained KNBS in the economic survey of 2017.

But ever since Al Shabaab launched their attacks and European governments responded by issuing travel advisories urging their citizens against visiting Diani, tourism has never not rebounded.

“January was always busy throughout, because we had chartered flights from Europe., even during the low season. But now, charter flights they don’t come, like from the United Kingdom we don’t have a single charter flight,” said Mburugu, noting that there were between 24 and 30 charter flights a week from the UK alone.

Charter flights

“For the last four years, there has not been even a single charter flight from the UK.

“When tourism was doing really well here in Diani, we used to have at one time 68 charter flights landing in Mombasa in a week,” Mburugu said, noting that today, on a really good day, they get about eight charter flights. 

Charter flights allowed tourists to pay for the whole package when they are coming -- flight, hotel, transfers, everything.  “We have lost such a huge market in the United Kingdom,” lamented Mburugu.

“So, when that (travel advisory) is put nobody gets insurance,” he explains, noting that foreign citizens from these countries were left to take the risk of coming to Diani on their own.

“That is how the charters died because even the crew and the pilots were not covered when they came to Mombasa,” the resident manager said.

Although the advisories are not as many, the charters have moved on to other businesses or countries, leaving behind a huge gap that might take long and a lot of effort to be filled.

No wonder, Hamisi who says it is now a year since he had a customer, adds:  “Mzungu alirogwa akaenda,” (The white man was bewitched, so he left).