"Don't come to Kenya if you can't afford to see a sunrise in the savannah.
It's like for a foreign tourist to travel to Italy and not pass through Venice".
This was said to me by one of the first compatriots who told me about this country when I arrived thirty years ago.
Since then the sun has risen countless times from the horizon of a nature reserve, colouring an umbrella-shaped acacia, a baobab or a dumdum palm tree in soft orange and painting the sky each time surprisingly differently or gracefully settling the course of a river.
Each time, as today, I confuse emotion with the torpor of the cold morning with the certainty that one must always go towards life and never be imprisoned by anything or anyone.
The considerations would be many and very slow, it would be better to rely on the horizon, also because from here, descending from the hills of Saruni, you will meet zebras, giraffes, elephants and gazelles in profusion.
We have breakfast at the foot of a puddle owned by a family of singing hippos, with the giraffes circling around us curious. I don't think it's for bread, butter and jam.
It will be an exceptional day, with the excursion to the Mara river and other scenes of hunting and rest, of pain and involvement, with the apex reached at the rhinoceros sanctuary of the Olchorro Conservancy.
Maasai Sinya's guide climbs the Land Rover over a gentle hill overlooking much of the Mara. While we are busy enjoying the view, a ranger on foot asks to pull the car over and a huge white rhinoceros appears from a bush.
Spectacle!
"Come down, please," says the ranger.
In thirty years I have never walked beside a rhinoceros and Leni has never even seen one. As someone who may not be a poet but can sing some things, "emotion has no voice", said. We tried this with a video that you can see below.
The worthy finale of this safari is on the way back to Saruni, with a glass of red wine in front of the sunset and the huge and quiet antelope Eland at my side (just a little anxiety about the long horns, you never know that by mistake...) intrigued by the glass and maybe also by the appetizers of the aperitif and certainly comforted like us by the warmth of the bonfire.
We remain there to share this moment that the impoverished of the Italian language would boil as "crazy", that like gray always looks good on everything.
But in Kenya, as I always say, there are so many colours in the middle of black and white and it is worth living them all, always.
See you tomorrow!