FREDDIE'S CORNER
05-11-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
FREDDIE'S CORNER
25-10-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
Tell me about when we met by chance, by smiling, by...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
09-10-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
FREDDIE'S CORNER
06-10-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
‘Come rain or come shine', whatever the weather, at 7am the market in the old city of Mombasa...
TALES AND REALITY
23-08-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
This story refers to a true event that happened on the coast of Kenya, obviously fictionalised. I consider...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
16-08-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
There is a Kenya for everyone: the variety of landscapes, situations, contrasts and beauty of this country...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
31-07-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
I do not remember if I chose this life, or was forced into it.
I remember...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
17-07-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
When I arrived in Kenya, I was not yet 20 years old and my head was full of hopes, ideals...
ICONS
20-06-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
The great Kenyan writer Meja Mwangi entitled one of his novels 'No Christmas without Tusker'. Similarly...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
25-05-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
The things I can do are not important.
They are...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
16-05-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
They call it 'the forest of the free baobabs'.
Free.
Not only...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
14-05-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
If you were to take a trip to Kenya, you might find yourself in the presence of Kilimanjaro, the...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
06-05-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
If you are planning a holiday on the Kenyan coast or in its immediate hinterland, take my advice: plan...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
02-05-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
I swim.
I no longer need to...
INSTANT SONG
29-04-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
'The sea in winter is a concept that no one ever...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
25-04-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
Western man is a peculiar animal, because he is capable of not believing what he...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
12-04-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
I wish to make bricks my future
redemption of...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
03-04-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
Every rural road leading inland from the Kenyan coast is an uneven carpet of clay that, as vehicles pass...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
31-03-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
The layman says that in Kenya one Easter is as good as another, that as always the sun rises at...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
26-03-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
Kenya is also a world of light.
Among all the attractions, suggestions and...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
19-03-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
When i was young, I used to go to the mouth of the river.
I had...
IRONY
15-03-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
There is a lot of talk, not only in Italy but also in Kenya, especially among compatriots living there, about...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
01-03-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
I taught my daughter that wealth is nothing without the love of...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
27-02-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
At first sight, the trees of Takaungu seem to project a 'fantasy' scenario to the...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
22-02-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
Nairobi's anarchy is a form of self-management in constant motion. The matatu are certainly the...
VALENTINE'S DAY
14-02-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
Among the tens of millions of human beings who today remember, believe in and...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
13-02-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
I sleep above the bridges, because there is no more room...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
08-02-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
Mabati
is a poacher's story
that begins...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
25-01-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
I had passed by to look for you, but you were no longer in your usual place, in one of the few masonry...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
03-01-2024 by Freddie del Curatolo
Hero is a word-word, the kind we all too often use to wipe our mouths and dust our...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
28-12-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
I did not choose the Christmas holidays because at Christmas 'we are all better' or because...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
24-12-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
I left home with the intention of giving a little Christmas present to those who could really get...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
20-12-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
It will be a good Christmas.
It is not so much to remember Jesus, who is worshipped here distractedly but...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
24-11-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
I love the work that I have chosen and do, amidst a thousand difficulties and impediments, but...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
21-11-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
You have stopped at the roadside and are...
FUNNY STORIES
20-11-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
Those who have never been to Watamu, the only African seaside destination that brings together...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
18-11-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
In Italy I was looking for a bit of Africa in the garden, in...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
03-11-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
Every morning I look out of the shack and watch their...
24-10-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
I don't really know what war is, but I imagine it.
There is...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
09-10-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
Its precious cargo was hidden in a white and rather anonymous candy box from a Nairobi...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
01-10-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
We know mud well.
We live in the mud every...
17-09-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
In the beginning were the knife sharpener and the umbrella maker, who then if I remember correctly...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
04-09-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
FREDDIE'S CORNER
17-08-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
I remember the first time I set foot in Tezo, more than 30...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
24-06-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
Here it is not just 'the latest sacred representation of our times', as Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote of football, nor...
THOSE WHO...IN KENYA
15-06-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
Long gone are the days when, when one decided to travel to a foreign country, perhaps very...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
20-04-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
If in Italy we have had songwriters, sensitive and attentive chroniclers in verse of our times, or singers of...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
02-04-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
This is not the first such scene I have seen in Kenya.
The young woman in front of me, in the checkout line...
IRONY
05-03-2023 by Cianni Pino
LOVE
14-02-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
Kenya for Italians is not only the land of fantastic safaris, of relaxing holidays on white beaches, of a
07-01-2023 by Freddie del Curatolo
Once upon a time in Italy we had piazzas, downtown bars, bowling clubs or...
TALES
23-12-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
Dear African Santa Claus, an eleven year old boy named Kaingu, in the slum of Malindi, told me that you exist.
That there is not only your fellow of the Cold World, with ivory cheeks reddened from the cold and brandy, white long beard, sleigh turbo and horned reindeer.
IRONY
08-11-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
The suitcase on the bed is, yes, that of a long journey, as Julio Iglesias sang, but for those who make it, it...
EDITORIALE
05-11-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
01-11-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo e Leni Frau
Wanjohi is not one of the many vendors on the sides of Nairobi's narrow...
09-10-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
FREDDIE'S CORNER
10-08-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
All waiting for the results, as if announcing one president over the other would change anything.
All...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
24-07-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
"Are they coming?"
"Do you see...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
18-06-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
One of the things we like to do is to move toward Kilifi and, after forty minutes on the paved road, go onto the dirt...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
24-05-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
A few days ago I met a young Kenyan boy who climbs perilous wooden structures more than twenty...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
05-05-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
A few years ago I wrote a poem about the long-awaited time of the year when the rains finally arrive...
IRONY
04-05-2022 by Cianni Pino
I had never been to Chenia during the rainy season.
Also because there are no longer half seasons, but I...
26-04-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
At the Santiago Bernabeu in Ziwa, the game is played every day.
All it takes...
IRONY
29-03-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
TALES
21-03-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
The first thing he'd noticed upon arriving at the baggage claim room were the thousands of lights placed...
TALES
17-03-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
The mixed enthusiasm, mixed expectations, mixed curiosity, mixed anxiety of the...
RACCONTI
14-03-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
Everything had been organized abruptly, like a leopard attack in a savannah lodge. For once, the...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
16-02-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
They're back in Kenya.
Oh my God, back to Kenya.
Let's say...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
02-02-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
"She is different from all the others".
One of the most common expressions you hear in...
IMAGES
22-01-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
I got a room at the Classic Hotel
I'm no...
IRONY
19-01-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo
Paraphrasing the famous hens of the animated feature film, regarding the new arrivals of compatriots on the...
VIDEO
23-11-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
We have reached the twelfth and final episode of the first series of our "semi-serious...
VIDEO
09-11-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
We have now reached the tenth and third last episode of our ten-minute "strips" that...
VIDEO
02-11-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
Living for the day is one of the philosophies of Africa below the equator and, in...
TALKING PICTURES
01-11-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
OUR FEATURE
26-10-2021 by redazione
We have reached the eighth week of our light-hearted and non-academic journey through...
VIDEO
19-10-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
We have reached the seventh of the twelve episodes of our "semi-serious lessons" of...
VIDEO PRODUCTION
12-10-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
Every Tuesday, our "semi-serious lessons in Kiswahili" continue, a non-academic and less...
VIDEO PRODUCTION
28-09-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
We have arrived at the fourth appointment with our "semi-serious lessons...
VIDEO PRODUCTION
21-09-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
We are now at the third episode of our weekly appointment with the language spoken in...
VIDEO PRODUCTION
14-09-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
Here we are at the second episode of our video production "Semi-serious lessons of Kiswahili", dedicated...
VIDEO PRODUCTION
07-09-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
"A semi-serious trip around the most widely spoken mother tongue in Africa and the one...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
20-07-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
I've always wanted to run, to run away.
Not so...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
20-06-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
We have always been on the move, nomadic souls.
Maybe...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
02-06-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of a character I am very fond of and about whom I have...
IRONY
28-05-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
FREDDIE'S CORNER
24-05-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
One of the many reasons why I left Italy, leaving behind a career as a journalist and a less promising...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
22-05-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
It's a hard job, but i know how to do it.
My grandfather taught...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
12-05-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
EDITORIAL
10-05-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
As you have also read on our portal, Kenya has recently launched the first modern census...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
30-04-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
In East Africa, travellers will never starve.
Maybe...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
24-04-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
FREDDIE'S CORNER
20-04-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
Grandfather Kazungu knows that every man will never walk alone....
FREDDIE'S CORNER
12-04-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
If you ask someone who was born and raised in Ganze, in the hinterland of Kilifi, and...
TALES
03-04-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
In 1998, the writer and sociologist Spencer Johnson published a booklet that quickly became a best seller among...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
30-03-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
Thousands of foodstuffs are at risk of spoiling, and late deliveries could halt production that...
SONGS
22-03-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
A NOVEL
11-03-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
I don't give a damn about politics, the Kenyan government, Kenyatta and...
WORDS OF AFRICA
08-02-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
Do you remember how many times you have dreamt of Kenya?
Its...
30-12-2020 by Freddie del Curatolo
28-12-2020 by Freddie del Curatolo
AFRICA
30-11-2020 by Freddie del Curatolo
Non dovevi attendere un palleggio, un dribbling, un calcio di punizione per capire che Bouba Diop non ...
FROM MY VOLUNTARY EXILE
10-10-2020 by Freddie del Curatolo
The singer-songwriters, who for years settled mainly between Italy and France, with...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
21-08-2020 by Freddie del Curatolo
"Non c'è Corona, there's no Corona."
They tell you this in Italian...
MONOLOGUE
09-08-2020 by Freddie del Curatolo
ast year, exactly on August 9th, Malindi and Watamu were so alive and full ...
IRONY
20-07-2020 by Freddie del Curatolo
FREDDIE'S CORNER
19-07-2020 by Freddie del Curatolo
Years ago in Malindi with a thousand italian lira you could buy an...
WORDS
17-07-2020 by Freddie del Curatolo
I'would like to go back to Kenya because I miss it.
I would like to go back to Kenya because...
VIDEO
15-07-2020 by Leni Frau
here are several ways to react to these unfortunate times.
It's ...
TALES
27-06-2020 by Freddie del Curatolo
In the valley of Galana the sunset often has the colours of ripe papaya but not ...
POETRY
20-04-2020 by Freddie del Curatolo
When you go back to Kenya, it'll be a good day.
When...
EDITORIAL
28-02-2020 by Freddie del Curatolo
Because for years it was really La Dolce Vita and many former Italian residents who lived in Malindi in the ...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
15-11-2019 by Freddie del Curatolo
For Italians, patience is no longer a virtue but an anal lubricant.
They get ...
IRONY
02-06-2019 by Freddie del Curatolo
Africa is called "Affrica" with two F's.
Kenya is called "Kenya" with the I.
Sometimes...
SATIRE
21-02-2019 by Freddie del Curatolo
IRONY
05-11-2017 by Freddie del Curatolo
The scaremongering election bogeyman, confined to terrorism on the Somali border, with new treatments for malaria and its vaccine on the doorstep, how can people be frightened a little to avoid coming to Kenya?
TALES
22-08-2017 by Freddie del Curatolo
IRONY
12-08-2017 by Freddie del Curatolo
A white, big man.
The beard is thick and unkempt.
Even more ignorant hair.
The aragonized skin from the sun, the slow and lonely gallop of lobster.
IRONY
05-08-2017 by Freddie del Curatolo
Every morning, with punctuality that is all but African, on the banks of the Sabaki River, just where the sea comes to drink from fresh water, a hippopotamus emerges from clayey water.
It is always the same specimen, although the locals assure that they have at least three twins.
She is an adult female and, as such, usually angry and frustrated.
05-08-2017 by Freddie del Curatolo
It would not be Malindi if there was no sun
Who also appears when he doesn't want to
Smiling behind low and dark clouds
Which raises rains dreaming a new heat
FREDDIE'S CORNER
15-07-2017 by Freddie del Curatolo
Watamu the beautiful.
Malindi the magic.
Watamu the young and sparkling.
Ancient Malindi but still interesting.
I like to imagine the two resorts of Kenya as two mixed, exotic but evolved bloodthirsty women, but rich in resources that you think of a better future, radiant for them.
FREDDIE'S CORNER
28-07-2016 by Freddie del Curatolo
Jambo!
Let me introduce myself: I am the creator and director of the portal where you came.
For those who do not know me, this could be enough.
I love Africa, Kenya and Malindi, and i owe so much to them.
But I also like to observe the oddities, the paradoxes, the unusual and grotesque sides failed "colonization" Italian in these places.
On this subject I have written four books and dozens of articles, more or less serious, appeared in magazines, newspapers and websites.
And even something you'll find here ...
Enjoy the reading!
TALES
28-11-2015 by Freddie del Curatolo
It's almost a week that Peppino Onassis is living in the populous district of Majengo.
It went well that the owner dell'Upeponi Café has taken a liking to and in exchange for three Italian shirts and a pair of shoes with leather soles, granted him a plate of beans and polenta fist for ten days.
In the evening, if you are still hungry, unable to scrounge a few potatoes from mama crouched among the tin shacks of the muddy alleys of the slum. On top of the lane less muddy, in front of a concrete hut not yet finished with a tin roof collapsing, there Dahabu, a plump and pleasant woman half Arab and half Chilosa.
Maybe the woman started to give him credit sniffing the deal by selling its unbeatable samosas and crispy bajia at double the usual price.
"Me to pay when you have them, Peppino. Sooner or later the rain Mzungu money in his pocket somewhere. "
"Meanwhile, I'll give you that. It 'a painting of the Madonna with child "
"But I'm Muslim, Peppino"
MONOLOGUE
04-10-2012 by Freddie del Curatolo
Those who arrived in Malindi twenty years ago on holiday and are not yet go home
Those who are in Kenya for three days but have already learned all
Those who know how to deal with black people
Those who in Malindi you have to trust only the Italians
Those who "beware Italians who are all criminals means" and from where are you, sorry?
Those who "do not even me I steal a shilling"
Those that explain your Africa without let it get out
Those who came to Kenya to seek inside and found nothing
Those that Kenya wanted to find themselves and have found another in their place
Those who in Malindi were so off that we were not inside
What they call "geek" who instead it is integrated
Those that once this was all savanna
Those that had a lion in the garden
Those who have been bitten by a black mamba and are still alive (apparently)...
STORIES
12-02-2012 by Freddie del Curatolo
Clouds come and go, like emotions. At the equator they are so low, so close that you feel they are...
TALES
28-01-2012 by Freddie del Curatolo
I do not know if they are Ugandan or Kenyan.
They found me, I had not yet two months, the Tanzanian fishermen on a bagnarola off Kisumu.
He says that his mother was one that probably was shuttling between Kisumu, which is in Kenya and Jinja, Uganda's main port.
"Definitely not Tanzanian - they thought and said that I was the baby - because here the malaya are Ugandan or Kenyan".
After all the motherfuckers do not have citizenship, I imagine that I did not even have a mother.
Actually, the more I'm sorry for her, I might be the only boy to call her by her real name, and not to humiliate her in exchange for money.
So I grew up with them, the fishermen of Lake Victoria.
MZEE KAZUNGU
08-03-2010 by Freddie del Curatolo
Seeing a white man in Kakoneni, at eight in the morning, is not a rare but always gives a sense of the unexpected, again; Imagine the surprise of the things that materialize in an unexpected moment. This happens especially to the children who cheerfully arrange themselves on the edge of the track as for the passage of cyclists on the Tourmalet and are at one with the orange powder, the shade of the acacias and the smile of the sun.
Grandfather Kazungu instead knows that a Mzungu at that hour, on a dirt road, fifty kilometers in Malindi on the way to the Tsavo National Park, where there is near a Safari van, may belong to two categories :
PENSIERI
27-02-2010 by Freddie del Curatolo
"Why Malindi?"
I was wondering years ago while I was packing yet another suitcase...
15-10-2009 by Freddie del Curatolo
STORIES
08-10-2009 by Freddie del Curatolo
It's no coincidence that my biggest 'diseases' are Africa and Genoa.
In fact, we...
FREDDIE'S CORNER
23-08-2008 by Freddie del Curatolo
It is said that opposites attract.
This was immediately clear to me the first time I saw...
STORIES
19-02-2008 by Freddie del Curatolo
How well this white man dances...in short, it is clear that it is the first time that he is in the ...