He left just in the historic days in which the Member States are back in "his" Cuba. While Barack Obama, the President of Kenya with blood, was to end the age-old embargo, raising the American tourism, the founder of the Casino Malindi and other gaming halls in Kenya and in Africa, the Italian blood, lost his battle with an evil that has long afflicted and that a recent hip operation in the United States had not defeated.
Robert J. Cellini, better known as Bobby, he's gone to 76 years after an adventurous life, as if it was played on a green table, between the red and black roulette.
Originally from the province of Pescara, the son of immigrants, he grew up in the US but kept the indelible memory of youth in Havana. "Those were the days, the best ever time - confessed to me once, telling me of the magical life habanera in the fifties - the most for a boy. Then, with maturity, I married Africa." First in Nigeria, always in the family branch of the gambling halls, finally in Kenya where he landed in the mid-eighties. The bet of the Casino right in Malindi, where the Italian tourist was consolidating, was winning. At the end of 1990 Bobby opened much more than a gathering place for gamblers: a daily meeting point for locals and an entertainment for tourists to holiday in the villages. Even non-players in the evening get together for thirty-six years at the casino, and those who tried to snatch Bobby the local palm busiest Malindi, including some Flavio Briatore has failed. It 'was the only one to bring prominent artists on the stage of his restaurant, Franco Califano Fred Bongusto and Daniele Silvestri.
It would be too easy to open some cabinets, talking about him. But those expecting jump out of who knows what skeletons, will be disappointed.
When years ago a major Italian newspapers gave him the "mafioso" and compared him to Italian Americans moneywasher in Las Vegas, Chicago or Miami, showed me the article by saying: "But in your opinion, if someone wants to do business with the Mafia, he chooses to live in Malindi? ".
And is what still many media pundits, but especially so many ignorant blogger did not understand: in Kenya is to feel good and often just to get away from some larger games, which you do not want to participate or have grown tired. Robert J. Cellini loved Malindi and Kenya and if the first few years he earned with his creature, it was only by virtue of his entrepreneurial skills.
Rather what we feel we can say about Bobby is that it leaves a big family, a lineage rooted in the past.
By the energetic, wise and vital wife Esther to four children and many grandchildren.
To them the condolences of Malindikenya.net