More Tourists Are Asking "Ken-ya? Why Not?"

Bethan, 56, lives in southern England on the same street as best friend Allie, 64. They are on their first holiday to Kenya, a country they say is "just full of big young boys who like us older girls." Hard figures are difficult to come by, but local people on the Kenyan coast estimate that as many as one in five single women visiting from rich countries are in search of sex.

Allie and Bethan -- who both declined to give their full names to reporters -- said they planned to spend a whole month touring Kenya's palm-fringed beaches. 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. 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. Bethan kept one eye on her date -- a 20-year-old playing pool, a red bandana tying back dreadlocks and new-looking sports shoes on his feet. He looked up and came to join her at the table, kissing her, then collecting more coins for the pool game.

These same beaches have long been notorious for attracting another type of sex tourists -- those who abuse children. As many as 15,000 girls in four coastal districts -- about a third of all 12-18 year-olds girls there -- are involved in casual sex for cash, a joint study by Kenya's government and U.N. children's charity UNICEF reported late last year. Up to 3,000 more girls and boys are in full-time sex work, it said, some paid for the "most horrific and abnormal acts."

Emerging alongside this black market trade -- and obvious in the bars and on the sand once the sun goes down -- are thousands of elderly white women hoping for romantic, and legal, encounters with much younger Kenyan men.

"Old white guys have always come for the younger girls and boys, preying on their poverty ... But these old women followed ... they never push the legal age limits, they seem happy just doing what is sneered at in their countries." Experts say some thrive on the social status and financial power that comes from taking much poorer, younger lovers. "This is what is sold to tourists by tourism companies -- a kind of return to a colonial past, where white women are served, serviced, and pampered by black minions," said Nottinghan University's Davidson.

Many of the visitors are on the lookout for men like Joseph. Flashing a dazzling smile and built like an Olympic basketball star, the 22-year-old said he has slept with more than 100 white women, most of them 30 years his senior.

"When I go into the clubs, those are the only women I look for now," he told Reuters. "I get to live like the rich mzungus (white people) who come here from rich countries, staying in the best hotels and just having my fun."