The teacher of at least three generations of Italians in Kenya and Kenyans who wanted to learn our language, has left us at the ripe old age of 102.

It is said that Africa, for those who experienced it as a gift, prolongs life.

The same is said of culture, of the curiosity to learn and share knowledge.

If this is so, it is natural to have to say goodbye to Professor Giuliana Mollea Moretti after more than a century since her birth and almost seventy years in Kenya.
If for so many years the children of Italians in Kenya have been able to study or perfect their mother tongue, they owe it to her.
Arriving in the port of Mombasa on a banana boat that set sail from the port of Genoa in 1955, this jaunty but at the same time courageous and well-prepared woman went to Kenya to get married.
During a trip to Tsavo, where her brother was building bridges, she had met engineer Domenico Moretti, a former Italian prisoner of war in East Africa.

Her first lodging, as she notes in a very precious diary, consisted of: 'a lantern and thousands of insects, a plank in a palm-leaf hut, a hard but excellent bed for listening with closed eyes to the rhythms beaten by the blacks by the fires on their rudimentary instruments'.

Giuliana and Domenico married and moved north to a huge green farm in the Highlands.

In those years Kenya was fighting fiercely to gain independence from the British Kingdom, the Mau Mau revolt had broken out in the mountains around Nairobi, the Italians were often neutral spectators but the farms were often the scene of assaults and raids and Giuliana Mollea Moretti was indifferently frequenting expatriates of all nationalities and the natives of the area.

'The British used to tease us, saying that we Italians were half-Africans because we spoke Kenyan rather than English more easily. So when I would meet them, I would smile and greet them with a jambo,' he told me during an interview for the book 'Portraits of Italians in Kenya'. 'One day on my way out I met a strange character with long braids. I shared a long stretch of road with him, conversing amiably. I later learnt that he was one of the leaders of the Mau Mau rebellion'.

During the war of liberation, the Morettis moved to Uganda for a few years, where Giuliana was able to perfect her English. There, at a reception in Kampala, she met the newly elected president of independent Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, who complimented her on her elegance which, he said, 'is typically Italian'.

The teacher and the country's first president would meet again a few years later, when the Morettis returned to Nairobi.

With Kenya's Independence, many Italians became useful if not necessary in building a new nation, working hand in hand with the new local ruling class.

Thus it was that Giuliana realised her desire to return to give Italian lessons.

Since 1964, dozens and dozens of compatriots stationed in Kenya, from the children of prisoners to Agip and Alitalia employees, had their 'prof'. Just as Indians, British and Kenyans were able to learn a language that was important for their work.

To students with university ambitions she also taught Latin, to others she made them love the classics of our literature and the Divine Comedy.

Giuliana watched the current President of Kenya grow up, who attended the same college where she taught Italian. Even today, when Uhuru Kenyatta meets her, he bows before her respectfully and thanks her for her work, for which she was also honoured by President of the Republic Mattarella in 2017.

With Professor Moretti's farewell, Italians do not lose a page of their history in Kenya, but an entire book. Fortunately, it was an open book that dozens and dozens of fellow countrymen were able to draw on. Her life and her lessons, not only of the Italian language, but of enchantment, purity, respect and lightness (what her fellow countryman Italo Calvino called 'gliding over things from above, not having boulders on your heart') will always remain etched in the memory of those who knew and appreciated her.