One great Italian in Kenya has gone. One of the greatest.
Aldo Manos, who passed away after a brief illness at the age of 92, was an educated, passionate, tireless scholar who, after dedicating a good part of his life to the environment, working at the top levels of the United Nations and being one of the promoters of the UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, once retired became the historical memory of the Italian prisoners in Kenya during the Second World War.
Venetian of Dalmatian origin, Manos was already one of the 12 Italian officials in the 'glass palace' in New York in 1962 and ten years later, when the then UN Under-Secretary Maurice Strong organised the first historic Global Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, he was among his closest collaborators.
The following year, it was proposed to him to open the office dedicated to the Environment in one of the countries that symbolised sustainable development in the years to come.
While writing my book 'Portraits of Italians in Kenya', he told me how Kenyatta had wanted the UN in his country at all costs.
"He had a modern facility built in Gigiri, using land bought from a coffee plantation... not exactly 'sustainable' as a start... but all around was wild Africa. All it took was a bit of wind and red earth would settle everywhere in the office and our letters would arrive in 'savannah format' in New York. I used to arrive at the office in a Fiat 127 that I had imported from Italy'. That 127 was still in the garden of his home in Nairobi, running and active as he was until the end.  
When he retired in 1991, Manos continued to frequent Kenya, either as a member of institutional delegations from our country, or in other official positions or for conferences.
'I have been able to travel around this beautiful country with my wife and son,' he told me, 'and I have kept many friendships in the diplomatic and political spheres. Of Kenyans I appreciate their curiosity and natural approach to modernity. It is flattering to see their attempts to preserve the natural heritage in a continent where it seems that Mother Nature is almost an impediment, that she is a thing of the past, in a world where the culture of the environment is being trampled on more and more every day. Personally, when I hear a chainsaw, even from a distance, I feel sick'.
Seven years ago, after a series of painstaking and in-depth research, he wrote a book bringing to light the stories and characters of a camp unknown to history, 360 Ndarugu, on the outskirts of the capital.
At eighty-five years old, Aldo Manos is not tired of studying and learning.
His latest passion, apart from his hobby of clay pigeon shooting, is research on Italian prisoners of war in Kenya. From there, the desire arose in him to shed as much light as possible on the stay of as many as 52,000 people in Kenya, trying to save sites, monuments and inscriptions. As he did, with the help of the Comites, by organising the transport of a monument from Thika to the shrine in Nyeri, where our compatriots who perished during captivity are buried, and where the remains of the Duke of Aosta are kept.
In addition to this, Aldo Manos created the website prigionieriinkenya.org in which he collected names, stories, documents, receiving hundreds of testimonies from children, grandchildren and relatives of our compatriots who lived in the prison camps, many of whom never returned home.
Added to the sadness at the departure of a man whose industriousness and intelligence would have taken another twenty years at least, is that of losing the greatest custodian of a piece of Italian history in Africa. For this reason too, President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella had awarded him the honour of Knight of the Star of Italy.
Our most affectionate and heartfelt condolences go to his wonderful wife Elena, always close to him and the inspiration behind much of his research.