Two of Kenya’s leading tourism executives blamed western media for scandalizing the situation and argued that tourists on a Kenyan holiday are no more endangered by terrorism than tourists visiting Big Ben.

Before we get into this, let’s review what happened Friday:

Ten people were killed and at least 70 injured by two simultaneous explosions in an open-air market in mid-afternoon in Nairobi.

The first IED exploded around 230p at the periphery of what is called Africa’s largest second-hand clothing market. A few minutes later, a small bus filled with passengers exploded on a street adjacent the market.

The market is located about half-way between the troubled Eastleigh community of northeast Nairobi where so many Somalis live and the Nairobi city center.

Two days previously the British and American governments issued travel warnings urging their citizens to leave the Kenyan coast. Nairobi is about 220 miles inland from the coast.

The British secret service, the SAS, may have tipped off both British and Kenyan authorities that something was going to happen.

“Terror attack chatter” was intercepted by the SAS, according to the report in London’s Sunday Star.

The stern travel warnings that ensued prompted Europe’s mega travel company, TUI, to evacuate its British citizens booked through its subsidiaries, Thomson Holidays and First Choice Holidays, and to cancel its regular charter flights from Europe to the coast through October.

A third large European company, Kuoni, while not evacuating tourists canceled all further holidays on the Kenyan coast through October.

I explained in my blog Friday how the unique aspect of British travel insurance forced TUI into the decision. (Kuoni’s decision was for other reasons.) Hundreds of other European holiday makers booked through other companies were not evacuated and remain on the coast, today.

More than half the tourists who visit East Africa never see an animal. They come for the beautiful coast, and the coast of Kenya is as popular to Europeans for a holiday as the Caribbean is to Americans.

But the coast is heavily Muslim and has been so since the earliest histories. Kenya’s occupation of Somali unleashed the retribution which averages three terrorist attacks monthly, although the vast majority of these have been on or near the Somali border.

But the minority of other attacks have been on the coast, several quite near tourist centers.

In the last year a terrorist attack about once every two months has hit the Nairobi Somali expatriate community as well.

“Terrorism is a global threat and not unique to Kenya, with similar risks evident in Britain,” Jake Grieves-Cook, former head of the Kenyan association of tourist organizations, told the press Saturday.

He went on to detail that “the latest British MI5 and MI6 assessment of the terrorist threat within mainland Britain itself is now rated as ‘substantial’,” implying that a traveler in Britain was under as great a threat as in Kenya.

“This was not an evacuation as reported in the press,” Stefano Cheli, founder and owner of one of Kenya’s most successful upmarket tour companies said today. In a broadcast email to western travel companies, Cheli criticized the western media for suggesting the tourist repatriation was a British government operation rather than a TUI business decision.

Grieves-Cook, by the way, spent a long time in his statement explaining the exceptional good, particularly with regards to the near ending of Indian Ocean piracy, that the Kenyan military occupation of Somali has achieved.

He was almost but not actually saying that tourists owed Kenya an unusual latitude of security for what Kenya had secured for the world.

* * *

Vacations fall into a great variety of different categories. Probably the largest one is “R&R,” a reward for successful hard work. As such, the holiday maker wants as hassle free down time as possible. I think most beachcombers fall into this category.

A safari is a little bit different. I don’t think anyone planning a safari thinks it’s going to be relaxing. Exciting is the predominant theme. In fact, a touch of danger is often presumed, the titillation that is often a part of the motivation for booking. Like a sports holiday, there’s a definite aspect of challenge.

But you train carefully for a specific sport, and you believe – whether it’s true or not – that if you follow the rules the lion won’t eat you.

Terrorism is so successful because it’s just that: surprised fear. Holiday-makers don’t train to evacuate. There are no rules for dodging the bomb.

What’s left, though, is Grieves-Cook argument that Britain is as dangerous as Kenya, and the facts might bear him out.

Tourists killed in Britain’s scores of terrorist incidents, or in 9/11, are likely substantially higher than all the tourists ever killed in Kenya. So why not just trust the Kenyans to keep you as safe as the British?

Aha, that’s the answer and it’s not good for Kenya. Trust.

America and Britain have certainly had their share of terrorist acts, but Americans and Britains believe strongly that their governments have protected them against many, many more.

Why should a tourist trust Kenya when Kenya is unable to protect its own Eastleigh (Nairobi) citizens from a serious attack every two months? Facts aside, westerners are much more likely to trust the British or Americans to keep them safe than Kenyans.

It might not be fair. It might not even be rational. But it is the perception which matters.

Monday night one of the most deadly terrorist blasts (after the Westgate Mall incident) rocked the Eastleigh neighborhood of Nairobi. It was incorrectly reported by many agencies, however, that this area was “downtown Nairobi.”

Seven people were killed and another 25 injured (ten seriously) when terrorists threw hand grenades into two popular evening restaurants. This Eastleigh area of Nairobi is often known as “Little Mogadishu.”

A week ago Sunday gunmen entered a church in Likoni, Mombasa, and sprayed gunfire on the parishioners killing four.

And I wrote a month ago about the tourist attacks that failed in Zanzibar.

These are all closely related incidents, horrible if you are an East African, and completely predictable.

I’ve written extensively how the Obama/Hollande war on terrorism in Africa is founded on having made Kenya a military force to be reckoned with. This new military power has dislodged al-Shabaab and other al-Qaeda influences from Kenya’s neighbor, Somalia.

For the first time since Clinton’s foreign policy failures embodied in “Blackhawk Down” Somalia looks hopeful. America and France and all the western world is much, much safer.

Drones above the Somali, Kenya and Tanzanian coasts have wiped out more than two dozen terrorist leaders. U.S. special forces have chased those that remain into the interior of Africa where France is sealing their fate in the C.A.R. and Malawi.

But Kenya’s taking the hit for all of this.

Unable to create any significant retaliation to Obama’s wars in Africa, the much weakened terrorist cells in the horn of Africa are creating terror in the last places they’re able to:

The Somali communities in East Africa.

These communities, whether in and near Mombasa, Zanzibar or “Little Mogadishu” in Nairobi are overwhelmingly supportive of the war against terror and the Kenyan military occupation.

But simply because of the ethnic makeup of these communities, the remaining terrorists have entrees they don’t have elsewhere in Kenya or Tanzania.

And their anger is only slightly less against their fellow Somalis who they consider traitors than to Obama and the greater war on terror.

Kenya’s worst terrorist incident since the 1998 bombing of the American embassy was the Westgate Mall attack last September. But as I wrote at the time, these were latent global terrorists likely including Somalis not from Somalia, but Minneapolis.

That kind of terrorism is the real threat to tourism. The other horrible more recent acts are just too highly targeted ethnically to threaten tourists.

The Westgate Mall attack resulted in incredibly draconian Kenyan government responses, undoubtedly supported by America and others, that has hugely restricted a number of freedoms in Kenya.

I don’t think that’s good. But in the irony of the times, where America is so much safer than Kenya, tourists are now safer than ordinary Kenyan citizens.

And in my anxious estimation, tourists are increasingly safe.

Previous years’ tourist kidnapping and armed robberies of tourists in places like Lamu, Samburu and Shaba have ended. And the Kenyan government response to Westgate has been an iron fist.

Those are the facts that make the rarity and beauty of the reticulated giraffe and the legendary attraction of Kenya’s Maasai Mara safer for tourists than they have been for nearly five years. I’m not suggesting that tourism safety is the only obstacle to enjoying a vacation in Kenya.

While I’m willing to plan safaris again in Kenya, the main cities of Nairobi and Mombasa and Stone Town (Zanzibar) are out for the time being. Anyone for whom we make arrangements in Kenya also knows that we’ll pivot in an instant if the situation changes.

There are plenty of wonderful places for safaris in Tanzania. And if optimal game viewing is not the only goal, multiple great safaris are available in Zambia, Botswana and South Africa as well.

But for someone asking me now, is Kenya safe enough for a safari, my answer is the above qualified yes.

Jim filed this post from Karatu, Tanzania.