Beach operators look up to Xmas festivities as Mombasa roars back
As the December festivities fast approach, Jomo Kenyatta public beach in Mombasa, popularly as Pirates Beach, continues to attract holidaymakers to the Port City in huge droves.
After suffering a prolonged lull during the Covid-19 pandemic when public beaches and recreation areas were closed indefinitely, Pirates Beach has fully roared back to life
The aura of merriment is evident as families and friends flock the beach minute after minute to enjoy a swim, boat ride, sea breeze, and other allures of the shores.
For Lucky Kahindi, one of the dealers of swimming floaters under the Public Beach Tube Renters group at the beach, it is the moment he has been anxiously waiting to make a kill.
The hawk-eyed Kahindi spots a group of visitors and rushes towards them waving the floaters, hoping to convince them to hire the floaters. It is a job he has done for the last five years.
“I come here every morning and clean my working space and thereafter I head to the area where we normally stay on standby to wait for visitors. Once we receive visitors we take them to our office where we show them a changing room for them to change into swimming gear. We also show the visitors where to place their luggage safely and later hand them the tubes or floaters,” explains Kahindi adding that most of the visitors in recent times are local tourists.
The arrival of visitors signifies an economic turnaround for the beach operators who endured disruption in the last two years after their trade was badly struck by Covid-19 crisis. Indefinite closure of beaches and cancellation of social gatherings would automatically render all beach operators jobless.
“I was forced to turn to other jobs. I pleaded with a friend to lend me one of his motorbikes and started venturing into bodaboda in Mtwapa for survival. Life was really tough then and we were leaving from hand to mouth. All I wanted was to feed my family… But now we thank God we has started receiving visitors and we are doing better. Last festive season was really bad for us. We are really praying that the visitors continue trooping because we need them. This is where we get our daily bread,” the father of two reckons.
