At every start of the tourist season, those who live in Kenya and are not Kenyans, and thanks to the...

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These are days when fate brings back memories overbearingly and painfully, and with them faces...

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Tell me about when we met by chance, by smiling, by...

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‘Come rain or come shine', whatever the weather, at 7am the market in the old city of Mombasa...

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This story refers to a true event that happened on the coast of Kenya, obviously fictionalised. I consider...

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There is a Kenya for everyone: the variety of landscapes, situations, contrasts and beauty of this country...

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I do not remember if I chose this life, or was forced into it.
I remember...

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When I arrived in Kenya, I was not yet 20 years old and my head was full of hopes, ideals...

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The great Kenyan writer Meja Mwangi entitled one of his novels 'No Christmas without Tusker'. Similarly...

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The things I can do are not important.
They are...

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They call it 'the forest of the free baobabs'.
Free. 
Not only...

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If you were to take a trip to Kenya, you might find yourself in the presence of Kilimanjaro, the...

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If you are planning a holiday on the Kenyan coast or in its immediate hinterland, take my advice: plan...

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I swim.
I no longer need to...

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'The sea in winter is a concept that no one ever...

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Western man is a peculiar animal, because he is capable of not believing what he...

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I wish to make bricks my future
redemption of...

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Every rural road leading inland from the Kenyan coast is an uneven carpet of clay that, as vehicles pass...

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The layman says that in Kenya one Easter is as good as another, that as always the sun rises at...

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Kenya is also a world of light.
Among all the attractions, suggestions and...

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When i was young, I used to go to the mouth of the river.
I had...

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There is a lot of talk, not only in Italy but also in Kenya, especially among compatriots living there, about...

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I taught my daughter that wealth is nothing without the love of...

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At first sight, the trees of Takaungu seem to project a 'fantasy' scenario to the...

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Nairobi's anarchy is a form of self-management in constant motion. The matatu are certainly the...

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Among the tens of millions of human beings who today remember, believe in and...

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I sleep above the bridges, because there is no more room...

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Mabati
is a poacher's story
that begins...

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I had passed by to look for you, but you were no longer in your usual place, in one of the few masonry...

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Hero is a word-word, the kind we all too often use to wipe our mouths and dust our...

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I did not choose the Christmas holidays because at Christmas 'we are all better' or because...

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I left home with the intention of giving a little Christmas present to those who could really get...

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It will be a good Christmas.
It is not so much to remember Jesus, who is worshipped here distractedly but...

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I love the work that I have chosen and do, amidst a thousand difficulties and impediments, but...

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You have stopped at the roadside and are...

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Those who have never been to Watamu, the only African seaside destination that brings together...

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In Italy I was looking for a bit of Africa in the garden, in...

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Every morning I look out of the shack and watch their...

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I don't really know what war is, but I imagine it.
There is...

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Its precious cargo was hidden in a white and rather anonymous candy box from a Nairobi...

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We know mud well.
We live in the mud every...

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In the beginning were the knife sharpener and the umbrella maker, who then if I remember correctly...

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ANCING IN THE SAND STORM

Being in the...

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I remember the first time I set foot in Tezo, more than 30...

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Here it is not just 'the latest sacred representation of our times', as Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote of football, nor...

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Long gone are the days when, when one decided to travel to a foreign country, perhaps very...

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If in Italy we have had songwriters, sensitive and attentive chroniclers in verse of our times, or singers of...

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This is not the first such scene I have seen in Kenya.
The young woman in front of me, in the checkout line...

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Kenya for Italians is not only the land of fantastic safaris, of relaxing holidays on white beaches, of a

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Once upon a time in Italy we had piazzas, downtown bars, bowling clubs or...

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Dear African Santa Claus, an eleven year old boy named Kaingu, in the slum of Malindi, told me that you exist.
That there is not only your fellow of the Cold World, with ivory cheeks reddened from the cold and brandy, white long beard, sleigh turbo and horned reindeer.
 

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The suitcase on the bed is, yes, that of a long journey, as Julio Iglesias sang, but for those who make it, it...

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It must be that I too am beginning to grow old.
With all that Africa retains the Pascolian fanciullino and "lo spirto guerrier ch'entro mi rugge," and that...

Wanjohi is not one of the many vendors on the sides of Nairobi's narrow...

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Are you fed up with taxes, stress, politics and malfeasance in Italy?
It's time to emigrate elsewhere!
At last, a serious...

All waiting for the results, as if announcing one president over the other would change anything.
All...

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"Are they coming?"
"Do you see...

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One of the things we like to do is to move toward Kilifi and, after forty minutes on the paved road, go onto the dirt...

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A few days ago I met a young Kenyan boy who climbs perilous wooden structures more than twenty...

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A few years ago I wrote a poem about the long-awaited time of the year when the rains finally arrive...

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I had never been to Chenia during the rainy season.
Also because there are no longer half seasons, but I...

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At the Santiago Bernabeu in Ziwa, the game is played every day.
All it takes...

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Italians have not been heroes or navigators for many years now, but the passion for cooking and...

The first thing he'd noticed upon arriving at the baggage claim room were the thousands of lights placed...

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The mixed enthusiasm, mixed expectations, mixed curiosity, mixed anxiety of the...

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Everything had been organized abruptly, like a leopard attack in a savannah lodge. For once, the...

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They're back in Kenya.
Oh my God, back to Kenya.
Let's say...

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"She is different from all the others". 
One of the most common expressions you hear in...

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I got a room at the Classic Hotel
I'm no...

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Paraphrasing the famous hens of the animated feature film, regarding the new arrivals of compatriots on the...

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We have reached the twelfth and final episode of the first series of our "semi-serious...

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"What are we doing nice today, my friend?"

We have reached the eleventh and penultimate installment of our entertaining and non-academic...

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We have now reached the tenth and third last episode of our ten-minute "strips" that...

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Living for the day is one of the philosophies of Africa below the equator and, in...

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We have reached the eighth week of our light-hearted and non-academic journey through...

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We have reached the seventh of the twelve episodes of our "semi-serious lessons" of...

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Every Tuesday, our "semi-serious lessons in Kiswahili" continue, a non-academic and less...

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We have arrived at the fourth appointment with our "semi-serious lessons...

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We are now at the third episode of our weekly appointment with the language spoken in...

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Here we are at the second episode of our video production "Semi-serious lessons of Kiswahili", dedicated...

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"A semi-serious trip around the most widely spoken mother tongue in Africa and the one...

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I've always wanted to run, to run away.
Not so...

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We have always been on the move, nomadic souls.
Maybe...

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Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of a character I am very fond of and about whom I have...

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If it is true that the grass is always greener on the other side, then the Kenyans are very close to us.
In 1762, the...

One of the many reasons why I left Italy, leaving behind a career as a journalist and a less promising...

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It's a hard job, but i know how to do it.
My grandfather taught...

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I kept you at home, my son, because there was a bad air outside.
Listen...

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As you have also read on our portal, Kenya has recently launched the first modern census...

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In East Africa, travellers will never starve.
Maybe...

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Grandfather Kazungu knows that every man will never walk alone....

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If you ask someone who was born and raised in Ganze, in the hinterland of Kilifi, and...

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When it rains in Malindi, nature is playful
it is an Easter for the senses
every plant is resurrected
and discovers itself fertile

When it rains in Malindi...

In 1998, the writer and sociologist Spencer Johnson published a booklet that quickly became a best seller among...

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Thousands of foodstuffs are at risk of spoiling, and late deliveries could halt production that...

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I don't give a damn about politics, the Kenyan government, Kenyatta and...

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Do you remember how many times you have dreamt of Kenya?
Its...

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I am not an unprepared person, and above all I did not come from Italy to be...

Non dovevi attendere un palleggio, un dribbling, un calcio di punizione per capire che Bouba Diop non ...

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The singer-songwriters, who for years settled mainly between Italy and France, with...

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"Non c'è Corona, there's no Corona."
They tell you this in Italian...

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ast year, exactly on August 9th, Malindi and Watamu were so alive and full ...

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Years ago in Malindi with a thousand italian lira you could buy an...

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I'would like to go back to Kenya because I miss it.
I would like to go back to Kenya because...

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here are several ways to react to these unfortunate times.
It's ...

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In the valley of Galana the sunset often has the colours of ripe papaya but not ...

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When you go back to Kenya, it'll be a good day.
When...

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Because for years it was really La Dolce Vita and many former Italian residents who lived in Malindi in the ...

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For Italians, patience is no longer a virtue but an anal lubricant.
They get ...

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Africa is called "Affrica" with two F's.
Kenya is called "Kenya" with the I.
Sometimes...

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The scaremongering election bogeyman, confined to terrorism on the Somali border, with new treatments for malaria and its vaccine on the doorstep, how can people be frightened a little to avoid coming to Kenya?

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A white, big man.
The beard is thick and unkempt.
Even more ignorant hair.
The aragonized skin from the sun, the slow and lonely gallop of lobster.

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Every morning, with punctuality that is all but African, on the banks of the Sabaki River, just where the sea comes to drink from fresh water, a hippopotamus emerges from clayey water.
It is always the same specimen, although the locals assure that they have at least three twins.
She is an adult female and, as such, usually angry and frustrated.

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It would not be Malindi if there was no sun
Who also appears when he doesn't want to
Smiling behind low and dark clouds
Which raises rains dreaming a new heat

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Watamu the beautiful.
Malindi the magic.
Watamu the young and sparkling.
Ancient Malindi but still interesting.
I like to imagine the two resorts of Kenya as two mixed, exotic but evolved bloodthirsty women, but rich in resources that you think of a better future, radiant for them.

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Jambo!
Let me introduce myself: I am the creator and director of the portal where you came.
For those who do not know me, this could be enough.
I love Africa, Kenya and Malindi, and i owe so much to them.
But I also like to observe the oddities, the paradoxes, the unusual and grotesque sides failed "colonization" Italian in these places.
On this subject I have written four books and dozens of articles, more or less serious, appeared in magazines, newspapers and websites.
And even something you'll find here ...
Enjoy the reading!

It's almost a week that Peppino Onassis is living in the populous district of Majengo.
It went well that the owner dell'Upeponi Café has taken a liking to and in exchange for three Italian shirts and a pair of shoes with leather soles, granted him a plate of beans and polenta fist for ten days.
In the evening, if you are still hungry, unable to scrounge a few potatoes from mama crouched among the tin shacks of the muddy alleys of the slum. On top of the lane less muddy, in front of a concrete hut not yet finished with a tin roof collapsing, there Dahabu, a plump and pleasant woman half Arab and half Chilosa.
Maybe the woman started to give him credit sniffing the deal by selling its unbeatable samosas and crispy bajia at double the usual price.
"Me to pay when you have them, Peppino. Sooner or later the rain Mzungu money in his pocket somewhere. "
"Meanwhile, I'll give you that. It 'a painting of the Madonna with child "
"But I'm Muslim, Peppino"

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Those who arrived in Malindi twenty years ago on holiday and are not yet go home
Those who are in Kenya for three days but have already learned all
Those who know how to deal with black people
Those who in Malindi you have to trust only the Italians
Those who "beware Italians who are all criminals means" and from where are you, sorry?
Those who "do not even me I steal a shilling"
Those that explain your Africa without let it get out
Those who came to Kenya to seek inside and found nothing
Those that Kenya wanted to find themselves and have found another in their place
Those who in Malindi were so off that we were not inside
What they call "geek" who instead it is integrated
Those that once this was all savanna
Those that had a lion in the garden
Those who have been bitten by a black mamba and are still alive (apparently)...

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Clouds come and go, like emotions. At the equator they are so low, so close that you feel they are...

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I do not know if they are Ugandan or Kenyan.
They found me, I had not yet two months, the Tanzanian fishermen on a bagnarola off Kisumu.
He says that his mother was one that probably was shuttling between Kisumu, which is in Kenya and Jinja, Uganda's main port.
"Definitely not Tanzanian - they thought and said that I was the baby - because here the malaya are Ugandan or Kenyan".
After all the motherfuckers do not have citizenship, I imagine that I did not even have a mother.
Actually, the more I'm sorry for her, I might be the only boy to call her by her real name, and not to humiliate her in exchange for money.
So I grew up with them, the fishermen of Lake Victoria.

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Seeing a white man in Kakoneni, at eight in the morning, is not a rare but always gives a sense of the unexpected, again; Imagine the surprise of the things that materialize in an unexpected moment. This happens especially to the children who cheerfully arrange themselves on the edge of the track as for the passage of cyclists on the Tourmalet and are at one with the orange powder, the shade of the acacias and the smile of the sun.
Grandfather Kazungu instead knows that a Mzungu at that hour, on a dirt road, fifty kilometers in Malindi on the way to the Tsavo National Park, where there is near a Safari van, may belong to two categories :

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"Why Malindi?" 
I was wondering years ago while I was packing yet another suitcase...

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A new season has begun for Italian tourism in Kenya, and there are already those who point the finger at Malindi...

It's no coincidence that my biggest 'diseases' are Africa and Genoa.
In fact, we...

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It is said that opposites attract.
This was immediately clear to me the first time I saw...

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Imagine a space where sky does not dominate you, it runs through you;
where you don't breathe air, you taste it...

How well this white man dances...in short, it is clear that it is the first time that he is in the ...

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