With the terror attacks at the Coast, the beach is now paradise lost for me

One of my favourite pastimes is to do the crocodile (the crocodile is my beast of the month). No, not the death roll, even though I find that fascinating as hell.

A crocodile is a strange and ugly animal. It is an absolutely ruthless and bloodthirsty hunter — powerful, stealthy and unrelenting — but what interests me is its adaptation for survival and the pointlessness of its existence.

During the season of plenty, it slaughters other animals with unparalleled malice. Then it gorges on their corpses, swallowing whole chunks, including bone and horns. Its idea of carving a side of beef is to bite, then spin its five-metre, 500kg armoured body in a vicious whirl to tear off a chunk. Thus, the death roll.

After eating an insane amount of food, the overfed croc waddles to a dark, cool and quiet place and lowers itself to the ground. Then it slows down its metabolism and heartbeat to like a beat every 30 minutes or so and goes into a six-month stupor.

PARADISE LOST

A crocodile in this overfed stupor is said to aestivate, the process is aestivation, and it is also one of my favourite holiday activities.

The descent of our Coast — I am getting to the point, hang tight — is for me a personal tragedy.

I consider myself a citizen of three counties, one of them being Kilifi. I love the Coast, not just the physical ecosystem but also the culture. So I know what the death of tourism is doing to thousands of poor families.

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I always give the example of Paradise Hotel, a really good pleasure park which had changed the lives of many people around Mnarani. After it was bombed, the curio shops, kiosks and little bars and eateries are now overgrown with weeds, abandoned, like the dreams of those who profited from tourism.

EXTENDED ROUGH PATCH

I like to walk the dusty, deserted roads and confront the vicious heat. I wonder whether I will ever enjoy this simple pleasure again. For one never knows whether the young men in the oncoming motorcycle are the usual friends or citizens of Boni forest come to slit one’s throat.

There is no pleasure like finding a quiet place on the beach, with the wide expanse of the azure ocean at one’s feet, and simply, like the crocodile, aestivating. But a quiet, deserted place is only inviting when one is unconcerned about danger.

I have heard many people making plans for the coming school holidays and Christmas. I am afraid, unless there is great shift in politics and security, my friends who draw their livelihood from tourism are looking at an extended rough patch.

LET'S FIGHT BACK

I have heard about holiday plans for Ethiopia, Dubai, Qatar, South Africa, the Mara, Zambia and many parts of the country, but I have heard no one looking forward to the traditional beach holiday.

Dragging these folk back to our own attractions will take time and money. And it will only happen if there are no more shootings of tourists in the streets and grenades lobbed into bars.

Whoever is taking apart our country is doing a great job. But we should fight back, all of us, if for no other reason than for the sake of the tens of thousands of Kenyans from Lamu to Kwale who are now bearing the brunt of the collapse of tourism.

You know, the crocodile teaches us another lesson: You will never win a fight with a crocodile in its element, which is the water. Perhaps it is a lesson we are yet to teach our brothers in Al-Shabaab.

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The Constitution establishes institutions to execute, and they are called the Executive, and institutions to oversee, they are called Legislatures.

Parliaments do not execute. They can check, test, question, but they can’t plan and implement.

I agree entirely with the governors that the creation of county development boards, putting projects back into the hands of senators and MPs, needs to be thoroughly interrogated.

My position has always been that if senators and MPs want to remain relevant in county development, no one is stopping them from running for county office.

But now they want to run for national office and still call the shots back at home. This is a very bad idea.

Many of the county governments are inefficient and corrupt. But the thing to do is to help them become more accountable and efficient, not to shoot them in the knees and ram senators down their throats.

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