It's a novel, Angelo Esposito life, 92 years and 65 in Kenya.
Founder of the Alfa Romeo clubs Kenyan rally driver experienced and acclaimed electrician since the day of his landing in Nairobi.
We met him in the house he built for himself just outside the capital.
He immediately impressed the lucidity, the energy that seems to flow from the many wires and cables which has handled in his long life. Originally from Carvico, a few steps from the Pope John XXIII house in the province of Bergamo, Angelo learns the craft from "fiulet" in Milan.
Then the Second World War led him to Corsica and Sardinia with the Thunderbolt, then Florence and the mountains of Trentino.
Upon returning poverty is a fact.
He works for a couple of years in Milan, but the salary is starvation. "One day I accompanied a friend who is enrolled in the lists to make the miner in Belgium - he tells Esposito - and there was a Maltese who was recruiting skilled workers for Africa, an English project near Mombasa. The pay was good, 350 pounds per year and a 18-month contract. I gave the disponibiltà and shortly thereafter called me. " On January 6, 1949 Angelo Esposito was in Nairobi, after his first plane trip with stopovers in Tripoli and Khartoum. From there a career that has led him to work with the most important companies of Eastern Africa and then to go it alone. "During one of the many jobs around Kenya, Mzee Kenyatta met when he was still a prisoner in Maralal - recalls Angel - and some years later, when he was elected the first president of Kenya, I found myself in him the wire the home and presidential palace ". Born a long friendship (in the upper pane of the picture, Edwards studied with Kenyatta and the manufacturer Campagnola the construction of the State House), but the heads of state have always had a soft spot for Angelo. Lunch with the Negus Haile Selassie during his visit to Nairobi, the system Nyerere Palace in Dar Es Salaam, is called by the terrible Amin Dada in Uganda and knows Siad Barre in Somalia. Meanwhile develops its large parallel passion for rallying. He participates in many races between Kenya and Tanzania always on Alfa Romeo and even risks his skin in an accident in the Serengeti, fracturing his leg. But the stories would be a thousand and another thousand, including elusive grapefruit camps in Mogadishu, drink with Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra at the Mount Kenya Lodge and on the set of "Mogambo". After twenty years of full-throttle life, including big game and night clubs ( "women have filled my nights but emptied the" pockets admits) in 1969 married the woman of his life, the Scottish Jane, travel agent in the Capital and younger than him almost twenty years. A second life full of love and mutual commitment, enhanced by the birth of two daughters who now have made him grandfather. Two years ago Jane came to still missing and Angelo is moved to speak and show his photographs. But it is a moment, just a glass of wine and the boy from Bergamo of 92 years will be set to look forward. "I come to visit you in Malindi, soon. But first I have to whitewash the house, which is a bit 'that I put myself there." Never be tired of Africa and life, here is the secret of longevity and a fantastic ending story.