We can rescue you, Mr Hersi.

In the serene surrounding of the White Sands Beach Resort & Spa I am sequestered from the petty annoyances that define a typical Thursday. I don't have to worry about that crazy Umoinner or that combative Forward Traveler. I don't have to hear from that kanges about the benefits of settling for his rickety jalopy that passes for a public service vehicle. They don't deliver newspapers to the rooms, so I don't have to encounter the face of a mheshimiwa headlining something else inane. There are no radios in the room so I don't have to endure the typical Nairobi FM morning show with its mix of salaciousness and a play list that is at least a decade too old. All I have to expect is the soothing serenity of the Indian Ocean doing what oceans do.

But there is a niggling thought that simply will not subside: tourism is in the crapper. There is no way the White Sands would court my custom with such avidity if the pale faces from the West were digging deep in their holiday funds to get themselves to our sun-kissed coast. Do you know how they demonstrate they want me as a regular visitor? The ndauwos at the gate didn't even bother to ask in their typical coastal argot, "We ni nani?" They were, or they pretended to be, happy that I was staying at their hotel, that I had brought friends, that I was spending money in their spa and their beach bar. They didn't seem to mind I was rubbing shoulders with John Serut and his army of flunkies and brownnosers. And they plied me with an endless supply of ice-cold complimentary water. Buckets of it too.

For a decade I have been visiting this town and for a decade I have felt like a pariah, an interloper, a foreigner among my people. Not today. Today I am well-rested and eager to face the uncertainties of an uncertain day. I write this knowing full well that despite the "rebasing" of the Gross Domestic Product, Mr Mwangi at the Kipande House Branch of my bank is not going to suddenly add zeroes to my piffling bank account. I write this knowing that in three days, Mrs Kamau is going to demand that I settle my account for the month or else she will start looking for a new tenant post haste. I write this knowing that Uchumi has become a shit supermarket despite paying off its debts to the government. I write this knowing that come Friday, the good professor pwill expect me at my desk ready to offer my inadequate counsel on matters of great national importance.

Tourism needs the likes of yours truly. We are low maintenance, but when we cut loose we do so in style. We bankrupt ourselves in the hopes that providence will be providential. We have been priced out of the new car, new car smell market. We can only afford mortgages if we "donate" a kidney or a part of our liver. (Or win an uji supply tender.) But we are beginning to appreciate the subtle, insidious benefits of time off and walks on the white sands of the White Sands. We can be the solution to the billion-shilling hole Mohammed Hersi and his fellow investors are experiencing. We may not be the Capital Club's Donald Kipkorir or his friends, but what we lack in individual heft, we make up in mass volume and there are hundreds of thousands of us. All Mr Hersi & Co need to do is hold their noses and fling open their doors. (And their hearts if the spirit moves them.)