It is only when you see the results that you have the will to go on and keep dreaming.
I come from a country, Italy, where young people no longer have room to think big, where they cannot be young, with all the attributes of being young: the madness, the hunger for knowledge, the will to do, the desire to change the world and to hope for a better future. 
A static, disillusioned and resigned country. 
I believe that the satisfaction and enthusiasm for life come precisely from being able to make a change in one's surroundings, from seeing that the most basic physical law, that of cause and effect, works. One of my favourite sentences is from the book 'Domestic Happiness' (1859) by Lev Tolstoy: 
"I think I have found what it takes to be happy: a quiet, secluded life in the country. With the possibility of being useful with people who let themselves be helped, and who are not used to receiving. And a job that hopefully can be of some use; and then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbour. This is my idea of happiness.[...]What more can a man's heart desire?". 
I have found a bit of happiness in this land, the Kenyan coast, which is always smiling, where people have no time to be sad, where to the question "How are you?" a negative answer is neither allowed nor contemplated. 
This tells you so much about the people here. 
You can always tell a lot from words: you understand the importance of things. 
For example, the Inuit have many ways of saying the word snow: one word for freshly fallen snow, one for soft snow, one for hard snow, one for fluffy snow, one for windblown snow, etc.. 
This shows how fundamental snow is in their daily lives. Similarly, the fact that there is no negative answer to 'how are you' makes one realise just as much. 
Life must be faced with a smile and I, like many of my peers, had lost it in Italy. 
But living here makes you smile even in the strangest moments. Like the time I went to Langobaya, to monitor the agricultural projects of Karibuni Onlus. 
One thinks.... But what does it take?!? you go to the bus 'station', get on, and after an hour and a half you are in Langobaya. 
You have 4 hours to do everything you have to do and you go home.
Good. Here's how it went.
At 11.30, all set, off we go!
One must be patient, always! That's a mantra this land teaches you. 
Because even if you miss it and get angry, the situation doesn't change, so you might as well be patient and wait. 
So much so that to my frequent questions the answer has been, "Now that you have told me it is late, what do you suggest we do? What is your plan?"
To which I felt quite stupid.
I arrive in Langobaya at 1.30am, after a journey through the mud, where the time before we had got bogged down and in a universal downpour, in and out of the bus. Because rightly so in a place where it is hot all year round, so many windows are not fitted with glass (!!).
It ended up that during those hours of travel I made friends with the 'conductor', a sort of controller; he gave me his number so I can call him to ask the time he will pass through Langobaya on his way back to Malindi, so I don't wait too long at the bus stop and I can do what I have to do.
Scheduled departure at 9 am. 
At 9.30 am you are still inside the bus waiting and no one even seems to mind or pay much attention to it.
Here we go (9.50 am), but after a few tens of minutes, we stop. 
Breakdown! What do you mean breakdown?
No, but don't worry, "Hakuna Shida!", we'll fix it and off we go. 
After an hour, the phrase becomes 'a replacement vehicle is on its way'. 
In the end, the breakdown and the wait served me to get help for subsequent journeys and to get the location of the bus in real time so as not to miss it (as had already happened to me). 
That wait made me realise that it is true when they say that it is human relationships that count in life: knowing how to weave and build relationships with other people.
Because 'happiness is only real when it is shared'.
Here one can be happy and continue to dream that things can change, that the world can be a better place and I ... 
... I can continue to be young.