Ferdinanda Vigliani's first trips to East Africa date back to the 1970s. When she first set foot in Nairobi's New Stanley Hotel, the huge acacia tree in the Thorn Tree Bar housed messages from those who passed by and had something to communicate to prospective travelers.

As she writes, it was “a kind of slow, vegetal, trusting whatsapp.”

So many years have passed since then, so many struggles as a “second-wave feminist,” and so many articles, essays, plays and books by a woman of culture who celebrates her 75th birthday with an original, provocative and justifiably light publication entitled "Erotic Tales for Aged Women ” (Brè, Eros Cultura series, 136 pp.).

A reading in which her beloved Kenya is also featured, and which was written in part in her “buen retiro” near Diani Beach.

“My love for Africa comes from afar,” the writer tells Malindikenya.net, ”it is a love for an ancient and despoiled continent. To the Swahili Coast, I was brought by the attraction to the sea, to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean and to the History and culture of the Coast, which still fascinate me.”

Let us not discover today how much Kenya for those who love to write can serve simultaneously as a place of inspiration and investigation, of emotional journeys and of critique and insight. In the case of Ferdinanda, who in Italy continues undaunted to channel the last two instances into her online library pensierofemminile.org, it also means making extra sense of her inexorably advancing age.

How did this book with its catchy title come about, is it just a divertissement or does it conceal a moral?

“In the latest book published by Lidia Ravera (who is a dear, old friend, also a “historical” feminist) we read: Growing old is a man's destiny: something that happens to him because he is a human being. For a woman it is not just destiny. Precisely because she is a woman, a human being defined much more narrowly, for her aging is also a vulnerability.

I have spent my life fighting sexism, now I also fight ageism: age discrimination. The protagonists of my stories are neither beautiful nor young. The title calls them “aged,” even the word sounds old-fashioned. It refers not only to the 'characters,' but more so to the female readers whose attention I try to solicit.”

There is also a Kenyan inspiration and setting in the book of short stories. Does it stem from the fact that the Swahili coast is also notoriously an attraction for certain “black toy boy” ladies?

“Yes, it is true, three of the stories are set on the Kenyan coast but...no! No “black toy boy.” The male protagonists are: a mechanic who wears his suit zipper down to below his navel, a charming hardware store clerk, and a tinga-tinga painter.

Aside from the consonant change...is there a correlation between eroticism and exoticism?

“According to the Victorian writers who attributed a special sensuality to the tropics, there apparently was. Perhaps it depended on distance from certain stifling conventions prevalent in the home countries? Not to mention the Italian colonialism of “Faccetta nera” of which repugnance prevents me from speaking serenely.”

And so many peers (and others) of the author of this book will find themselves, perhaps even in the glimmer of a thought, in the “aged” stories.

We conclude with one of the Kenyan passages, taken from the short story “An Erotic Blue Suit.”

I have always found the sight of men at work sexually arousing. Not office work, of course. Manual labor, possibly hard: portering, construction, mechanics.

Here in Africa, seeing admirably sculpted male bodies stretching, muscles bulging and darting under exertion, is frequent and highly satisfying. Then there is my trusted mechanic. He is not very young. He owns the workshop. He must be between thirty and forty. He wears a blue jumpsuit with the zipper open to below the navel. The blue of the jumpsuit makes a splendid contrast with the dark chocolate-colored skin covering a firm abdominal musculature. That lowered zipper is my obsession. But today I had my chance: a job that required my presence at the wheel and hers next to me, behind the open door. His blue suit with the zipper down sends smells of sweat and soap.

The open door a little shields us from the view of the comings and goings of people in the workshop. Not much, but just enough.

How will this African adventure end? “Erotic Tales for Older Women,” in addition to bookstores, can be found on major online platforms.