Our memory as reporters in Kenya is also made up of episodes that we would never have wanted to report, explain in Italian and experience so close to home.
One of these is the terrorist attack on Garissa University, the tenth anniversary of which occurs today. 
This was one of the most tragic and regrettable episodes in the history of independent Kenya, the second in terms of the number of deaths after the explosion of the American embassy in Nairobi, with 147 Christian students killed by the fury of Somali religious extremism, in the town near the border with the state where the al-Shabaab militias still constitute a threat today.
The university, a splendid example of integration between students of different faiths, hosted more than seven hundred young people, almost all of them from other regions and guests of the campus and the dormitory. Here the armed group, made up of about ten people, broke in at dawn on 2 April 2015, shooting at the security guards and then searching the study rooms and dormitories for Christian students and asking those of Muslim religion to reveal themselves and escape. More than 500 students managed to escape, about 80 were injured. Four suicide bombers blew themselves up, one was killed by the police and the others managed to escape. 
Among them was Annastaciah, a young Kenyan student who was made to lie on the ground and shot at with machine guns, together with her roommates. Although she was shot in various parts of her body but not in the head like her friends, she was believed to be dead and survived. She told us her story after 36 surgical operations that ‘rebuilt’ her over five years, although they couldn't erase her memory and that black hole in her soul. Annastaciah graduated, thanks in part to a solidarity scholarship, in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Garissa. ‘Dreams,’ she said, “cannot be killed by fear or by wounds”.
The attack, due to its brutality and its target, young and willing students, many of whom were financed by the sacrifices of their not-so-wealthy parents, caused great commotion all over the world. Over the years, documentaries and dozens of interviews have been made. The main suspect, believed to be the mastermind of the massacre, is a former professor at the same university as the Somali man, Mohammed Kuno, who fled to Somalia. According to reports, Kuno was killed twice: the first time in 2016 and the second time in an attack by international forces in Chisimaio in August last year.
Italy was one of the countries that acted most quickly to help the survivors. Two weeks after the attack, the then Foreign Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, visited Nairobi and activated a solidarity plan that, through our Italian Cultural Institute, provided for the establishment of 25 scholarships for Garissa students who had applied for them.
Four years ago we interviewed two of them, Shueib and Bervin. Both are still reluctant to talk about the pain, fear and agony of those moments, and both are happy to have been ‘saved’ on their human and professional journey, from Italy to the University for Foreigners in Perugia.
‘I grew up in Garissa, it's my home,’ Shueib told us. ’I haven't been back for two years and I still don't know when I will go back. I really miss Kenya, but now my life is here, thanks to those who gave me my first glimpse of light and hope after total darkness.’
Ten years on, it's right that we don't forget what happened, but we should also remember that even the saddest and most inhuman events can be followed by rebirth, and that the strength of man, particularly young people, is stronger than any macabre and arid plan of destruction.