An explosive charge of life, a smile like a weapon to win everyone over, sometimes cheeky but always contagious, like a real Tuscan girl, with which she made everyone in Malindi love her.
This was Flavia Tenerelli, known as "rafikina" or, for those who still remember her amused shouts, "Flavia 22", like her favourite number at the casino.
It's terrible to have to talk about this in the past tense, because Flavia, who enjoyed beautiful and carefree years, but also years of work, at the Tropical with Francorosso and at Coral Key, and important romantic relationships, was only 42 years old.
A cruel destiny united her to her friend Claudia Peli, our collaborator of the first years of malindikenya.net. Flavia, like Claudia, died far from her beloved Kenya in a scooter accident. It happened in Livorno, where she had been living for some time.
It was around 8.30 a.m. and, like every day, Flavia was driving her scooter to work in a clothes shop in Cecina with a friend.
According to the traffic police, the scooter they were travelling on crashed into a car, a Mercedes A-class driven by a 76-year-old woman. Flavia could not be helped: thrown from the saddle, she crashed into the car and died on impact. Her helmet was found far from the point of lethal impact.
Her friend Valeria will be fine, she has suffered various traumas and injuries but is out of danger.
Flavia, her friends say, was a two-wheel enthusiast, but not a daredevil. We will always remember her as a light of sympathy and enthusiasm in the happy and "messy" years of Malindi at the beginning of the millennium. That Malindi that he always thought about and that gave him so many friends that he continued to frequent even in Italy.