Tourism In Kenya. Do We Know It All?
Kenya is located in the east of Africa on the Indian Ocean coasts, with bordering countries including Uganda and Ethiopia. Kenya is the perfect place for a family-friendly holiday, with lots of things to do like water sports and safari trips. It has a varied climate, mainly warm due to its location on the equator. But despite its location on the equator, it has varied weather from hot and dry Januarys to rainy and cool Mays, so there are lots of different climates to suit your personality and needs. Kenya is a very popular holiday destination with roughly 1,470,000 tourists visiting every year. The main reasons for this are the stunning beaches, which are un-crowded and wonderful. There are many all-inclusive hotels with fabulous food at very reasonable prices. Once you are there, there is plenty to do including safari trips and hot air balloon rides over the Maasai Mara (the Maasai tribes land) and meeting locals with their handcrafted gifts to take back home for family and friends or to keep for yourself.
Whilst on your travels, you may also employ local people. For example, seventy to one hundred are employed in a hotel alone, so they are paid above the minimum wage of three hundred Kenyan shillings (three pounds). You can go on safari trips and help people in the safari lodge and sometimes you stop in one of the Maasai camps by paying an average fee of four hundred Kenyan shillings per person (four pounds). On this stop-off you will be able to see the Maasai doing traditional things like cultural dancing and making different products to sell.
So does this mouth-watering opportunity grab you and your family’s attention for a holiday? If it does, that is what the travel agents what you to think-- but are they telling you the full story?
Kenya isn’t all it is cracked up to be. First, it is home to terrorism. Last April, 147 students were murdered in a terrorist attack. Something else that is totally false is that you are supporting the locals financially. The locals are paid way under the minimum wage and live in squalor where they can’t afford a house bigger than one room; they can’t afford clean water and they can’t feed their families. The locals can’t do anything about this; they protest but the hotels don’t listen to them. One of the main reasons is that people book and pay for their holidays in the U.K. and the money doesn’t even get out of the U.K., let alone to the locals in Kenya. Even if you go on a safari trip in Kenya when you arrive in a camp and you give the Maasai tribe some money, they have to give nearly all of it back to the driver. For example, if you give one thousand four hundred Kenyan shillings the camp-keep only get forty Kenyan shillings.
Now that you know more about a real Kenyan holiday, do you think it would suit you as a perfect place to visit or would it be a holiday from hell?
Uh, lei-sure about that?:
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