We greet 2022 by reliving the highlights and events that through the Italians in Kenya portal we have told you about during the year.

Jan. 2: Richard Leakey, the father of Kenya's national parks, founder of the Kenya Wildlife Service and for years director of Kenya's National Museums, dies at 77.

Jan. 11: Skirmishes between Kenyan civil aviation and Emirates airline. Closed for more than two weeks, connections between Nairobi and Dubai will resume Jan. 29.

Jan. 24: An incredible feat for Kenyan racquetball: 16-year-old Angella Okutoyi is the first Kenyan tennis player ever to make it through two rounds of a Grand Slam tournament (albeit a junior one). In the first round, her defeated opponent is an Italian, peer Federica Urgesi, from Fano in the Marche region of Italy.

Jan. 29: Italy out of the Top 10 inbound tourists in 2021, never happened before. In addition to the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands also outnumber Italians in Kenya in attendance.

Feb. 18: Watamu hosts the final day of the Safari Rally Classic, a great success for classic cars and tourism.

Feb. 25: Outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta's official announcement: he will endorse his former rival Raila Odinga in the elections and not his current vice president William Ruto.

March 3: An Italian historian in Kenya, Giovanni Parazzi, leaves us. A great expert on Africa who also told the story of Kenya and the story of his life in schools.

March 9: After tourism fully reopens, the outbreak of war in Ukraine curbs bookings for Kenya. There is no peace among the palm trees.

March 19: Malindi also bids farewell to Sergio Gnutti, a well-known industrialist from Brescia, frequent visitor to Kenya and philanthropist.

April 1: Supreme Court finally rejects Kenyatta and Odinga's Building Bridge Initiative (BBI), which was supposed to lead to a constitutional referendum. Hard blow ahead of August 9 elections.

April 4: Kenya goes without gasoline for ten days, multinationals demand import and excise payments from the government.

April 22: Farewell to Mwai Kibaki, Kenya's third president. He was 91 years old.

April 25: Italian, former director of San Marco Base, Franco Esposito runs for governor of Kilifi County in elections.

May 1: Tolstoy, one of Amboseli's most imposing, hieratic elephants, died at age 51 (still not old for the lives of large African pachyderms). Wounded by the hand of man, not from smuggling its precious ivory tusks, but struck by a farmer who was curbing its invasion into his cultivated field.

May 3: The government raises minimum wages for employees by 12 percent.

May 14: And Kenyans the world's best nurse. Anna Duba, employed at Marsabit County Hospital, prevailed over more than 24,000 participants in the Global Nursing Award competition from 180 countries around the world.

June 4-5: After the return of the Republic Day in attendance at the residence of Italian Ambassador Alberto Pieri, the Italian Food and Wine Expo at the Village Market in Nairobi also returns, with great success with the public.

June 9: With exactly two months to go until Kenya's elections, polls show Raila Odinga is ahead of Ruto.

June 15: Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio is visiting Kenya, where he will inaugurate work on a health hub and visit other Italian projects.

June 22: An Italian, Paolo Brondi, is stopped in Mombasa with an ivory statuette and arrested. He will be released on July 2.

June 27: A volume of short stories by Gianni Rodari translated into Kiswahili is presented in Malindi at the initiative of the Italian Cultural Institute in Nairobi.

June 29: Prominent among the candidates for president in the 2022 elections is George Wajackoyah, a lawyer and former intelligence agent who has marijuana liberalization on his agenda.

June 29: Landed, via Zanzibar, the first charter of the season of the NEOS airline, the only one that will fly this summer with a direct Italy-Kenya route, except precisely on the outbound leg the stopover in Zanzibar for those who decided to vacation on the Tanzanian island instead of the Kenyan coast. Flights leave from Rome and Milan with final destination Mombasa and on the return from Mombasa directly to Italian airports.

July 7: The food emergency caused by the drought becomes dire, elephants and zebras die exhausted in Samburu, but desperate times also dawn for humans.

July 12: Gianni Vescovo, a historic Italian entrepreneur in Nairobi, dies at 82. He arrived in Kenya at a very young age and after a variety of jobs to establish himself in the African country as a true emigrant, in 1968 Vescovo had founded Italproducts in Nairobi, a company specializing in importing and assembling Italian kitchen and hotel equipment. Starting from nothing, with his incredible will and blind dedication to his work, Vescovo was one of the first countrymen to be recognized as an Italian excellence in Kenya.

July 16: Three Belgian tourists die in a head-on collision on a safari bus along the Mombasa-Nairobi highway, one of the most dangerous roads on the continent.

July 17: After eight years, Kenya reopens to international adoptions. President Uhuru Kenyatta signed the Children Act into law on child protection and care, which now takes effect, three weeks before national elections and the end of his term.

July 24: Another horrific incident shocks Kenya during the vacation season.
At least 24 people died after a Mombasa-bound bus they were traveling on plunged into the Nithi River along the Meru-Nairobi highway. The bus fell off the bridge and into the riverbed after a flight of about 40 meters.

July 25: Farewell to Giuliana Mollea Moretti, 101, she was the teacher of at least four generations of Italians from the 1960s to the end of the last century.

Aug. 10: Contrary to what the international press was predicting, the elections in Kenya went smoothly, without incident.

Aug. 15: Election results: William Ruto is elected president and will succeed former leader Uhuru Kenyatta.

Aug. 16: Opposition candidate Raila Odinga files an appeal.

Aug. 17: Andrea Corini, a 42-year-old from Brescia, walked alone through Tsavo East National Park after his off-road vehicle became bogged down.
He is miraculously alive, rescued by park rangers who found him when total evening darkness had already fallen in the savannah. The hapless tourist is convinced that he acted for the best....

Aug. 18: The Italian press, ahead of the confirmation of election results, invents "the chaos that is not there" in Kenya. But facts disprove it.

Aug. 20: Freddie del Curatolo is named "Cavaliere" by President Mattarella for his work in informing and promoting Italianism in Kenya and its excellence, and for solidarity activities. Also receiving the honor with him is Watamu Consular Assistant Marco Cavalli.

Aug. 20: Italian Paolo Camellini is sentenced to life in prison in Kisumu for an obscure pedophilia case. The accusation comes from his ex-partner against her son. Camellini remains in prison to this day.

Sept. 5: William Ruto is confirmed as Kenya's fifth president. All opposition appeals rejected. Again no violence is reported in the country.

Sept. 8: Italian Ambassador to Kenya Alberto Pieri ends his term and leaves Nairobi.

Sept. 14: New Ambassador Roberto Natali takes office in Kenya's capital.
 
Sept. 15: The book "Nairobi" by Freddie del Curatolo and Leni Frau is released in Italy.

Sept. 30: Freddie and Leni attend "Festa Kenya" in Milan, great success in attendance.

Oct. 4: Historic RAI correspondent and founder of the Nairobi bureau Enzo Nucci retires after 16 years of reporting, live coverage, information and stories from East Africa.

Oct. 14: First official meeting between Kenyan President William Ruto and the new Ambassador of Italy to Kenya, Roberto Natali. "Italy-Kenya, friendship with solid foundation," Ruto comments.

Oct. 28: William Ruto launches his first government.

Oct. 30: Exhibition of Italian illustrators opens at Malindi Museum as part of "Italian Language Week."

Nov. 1: A big long fire breaks out on Kilimanjaro. Africa's highest mountain will burn for more than 10 days.

Nov. 2: Farewell in Tsavo National Park to Dida, Kenya's oldest "tusker" (big-tusked) elephantess.

Nov. 5: Cottolenghina nun Maria Carola Cecchin is beatified in Meru, in the region where she brought assistance and mercy to thousands of Kenyans a century earlier.

Nov. 9: The iconic Kenyan beer "Tusker" celebrates 100 years.

Nov. 10: The musical duo of Italians in Kenya Freddie and Sbringo present "Baridi sana," the song in Italian and English dedicated to "Tusker," a single from the album "Once Upon a Time There Were Italians in Kenya," to be released in December.

Nov. 11; Italian World Cuisine Week opens in Kenya, numerous events in Nairobi and on the coast.

Nov. 14; First starvation deaths in Kenya: She died of hardship and exhaustion because she could not see her eight children go hungry. The last of these, three weeks old, was still attached her breast, with which she could barely breastfeed him. A week earlier, an 80-year-old grandmother died of starvation after a days-long forced fast and spending her last strength wandering around her village looking for wild herbs and berries to fill her stomach.

Nov. 17: Phone scam in Kenya linked to operator Safaricom, more than 100 Italians fall into the net stretched by "insiders" who embezzled data and in some cases even money through the "Mpesa" phone banking service.

Nov. 18: Farewell to Gogo, the studious grandmother who at age 90 had decided to return to the desks and was featured in a documentary about her life.

Nov. 22: After an egregious case of attempted baobab export from Kenya, President Ruto takes action on the eradication of the thousand-year-old plant. There is hope for a law to protect them permanently.

Dec. 7: Farewell to Giampiero Pojaghi, 82, Italian historian in Malindi, former nightclub and restaurant manager.

Dec. 9: Freddie del Curatolo and Leni Frau present their book "Nairobi" in Nairobi and open Leni's exhibition "Nairobi, the Visible City" at Queen Deli, Westlands.
Dec. 26: Another Italian historian from Malindi leaves us: Giulio Giro was 74 years old and had arrived in Malindi in the 1990s. He had switched from importing to construction, favoring social and charitable works.