Kenyan Vacation For Grandma

Bethan, 56, lives in southern England on the same street as best friend Allie, 64.

Hard figures are difficult to come by, but local people on the coast estimate that as many as one in five single women visiting from rich countries are in search of sex.

Given that Allie's ex-husband, Frank, left her ten years ago for a 20 year old Thai girl, I'm not sure what we are squabbling over. Bethan isn't sure what happened to Gerry. He disappeared right after the birth of the third child and is presumed dead although there are rumors he's been spotted in Siem Reap.

"It's not evil," said Jake Grieves-Cook, chairman of the Kenya Tourist Board, when asked about the practice of older rich women traveling for sex with young Kenyan men.

"But it's certainly something we frown upon."

Also, the health risks are stark in a country with an AIDS prevalence of 6.9 percent. Although condom use can only be guessed at, Julia Davidson, an academic at Nottingham University who writes on sex tourism, said that in the course of her research she had met women who shunned condoms -- finding them too "businesslike" for their exotic fantasies.

AIDS is all the discouragement I'd need on either side of the fence.

They are on their first holiday to Kenya, a country they say is "just full of big young boys who like us older girls."

The white beaches of the Indian Ocean coast stretched before the friends as they both walked arm-in-arm with young African men, Allie resting her white haired-head on the shoulder of her companion, a six-foot-four 23-year-old from the Maasai tribe.

It's difficult to understand why anyone would take comfort in being with someone only interested in their money. And yes, I'm thinking of you 65 year old man with the partially bald head, scraggly ponytail and gut with the 23 year old Asian beauty. When she finds out that the teaching position you have at the modest Chinese high school is not as lucrative as she imagined, she's going to walk.

He wore new sunglasses he said were a gift from her.

"We both get something we want -- where's the negative?" Allie asked in a bar later, nursing a strong, golden cocktail.

She was still wearing her bikini top, having just pulled on a pair of jeans and a necklace of traditional African beads.

Ouch. No doubt she had her thinning grey hair cornrowed by the ladies on the beach for just slightly over market. It will look great with that bikini. Who knows what the appropriate age is the clean out the closet and get rid of those things reserved for the young, but she's missed it exponentially if she's 65 and still sporting the bikini.

In truth as long as I don't have to pay any part of Allie or Bethan's health care costs when they get AIDS or some other form of VD, I could care less who they are shagging. It doesn't sound like the rest of the economy is missing these two bucks they've managed to latch on to, so what is the harm. You go girls!