Falling in love in the ‘second age’ is often the most serious, fulfilling, serene. Although they lose their irrationality, the enthralling emotional afflatus of the most virginal passion gains in value with wisdom, sharing, and the desire to rediscover oneself capable of love, this time with knowledge.
This must have happened to Diego Masi, Lombardy communications entrepreneur, former parliamentarian and undersecretary with responsibility for immigration, with Kenya. Not the postcard-perfect ‘Africa-sickness’ or even of Blixenian memory, not the rhetoric of ‘let's help them, poor things’, but something deeper and more concrete, albeit starting from the same impulses and the same sensitivity.
This year his proactive and intelligent approach to Kenya came of age.

Galeotto was a trip to Nairobi, eighteen years ago, when Masi and his wife Daria visited the slums of the capital Nairobi and realised that, with an approach that was more rational than pietistic, with vision and plans rather than laughter and candy, they could do something for thousands of children living in conditions bordering on bearability and human decency.
‘Since then, this is what Kenya has been for me,’ Masi tells malindikenya.net, ‘can you believe that in almost twenty years I have done no more than two safaris, and that I have never been to the coast?
It's hard to believe, seeing what he has achieved between Korogocho, the slum from which Father Alex Zanotelli introduced Italy to the desperate reality of African slums, and Utawala, where he has set up a model children's centre and a professional cookery school.
All this under the name ‘Alice for children’. An 18-year-old Alice who has never lived in a wonderland, but in an undergrowth of hardship where you have to start from the basics: health and education, and the African pillars of family and community.
‘To date, we support at various levels about three and a half thousand children, mostly orphans,’ explains Masi, ‘and that is still very little compared to the situation in the slums of Nairobi, not to mention Kenya and the whole of Africa.
Masi has also written books, has a blog (Exploding Africa) and a YouTube channel from which he expresses his thoughts on the future of the ‘young continent’, neo-colonial abuses, immigration and solidarity that is not an end in itself. In his book ‘Eurafrica’ he points out a possible way to ‘save Europe by saving Africa’.

Alice for Children has built schools in slums over the years, working together with local associations, communities and institutions.
‘We have built schools in the slums to guarantee boys and girls a complete, quality education, which follows them from kindergarten to the world of work, as well as providing them with medical assistance and daily food supplies,’ explains Masi. ’For me they are like children, over the years I have learnt to know their way of dealing with the difficulties of growing up and of relating to others. Our projects aim to educate and train them to make them self-sufficient tomorrow and capable of handling the challenges and difficulties that this society imposes on them'.
We visited the Utawala centre, a model facility in one of Nairobi's satellite suburbs, where many orphans, since 2007, have embarked on a journey thanks to the Italian NGO, which has seen many of them find employment in the digital and technology sectors, in catering and in the hotel industry.
The cookery school, in particular, is an example of how supporting the young students through education and livelihood is stunted without providing them with the opportunity to specialise. Every year cooking teachers come to Utawala from Italy and important chefs come to do master classes. Those who graduate almost always find employment in restaurants or in the tourism sector, others even open their own small businesses. In addition to them, thanks to the collaboration with a local association, the children's centre hosts about a hundred children without parents, or from disadvantaged families, for whom the aim is still partial or gradual reintegration.
‘Every time we come back it is a bath of reality and new challenges, but it is also an opportunity to see the constant growth and the perception that the communities of Korogocho and Utawala have of our projects and the philosophy of Alice for Children,’ says the former parliamentarian. ’This work is possible thanks to the help of many Italian volunteers and donors who have been able to see and understand what we do.
At the last end-of-school party in Korogocho, also attended by the Italian ambassador, Roberto Natali, the local institutions prepared a surprise for Diego and Daria, naming the park of a school in the slum after them. An oasis of green hope within a difficult reality, just as Alice for Children has been for 18 years in Nairobi.