Grandad Kazungu was a wise man.
You rarely heard him complain.
With patience and the rare gift of planning, over the years he had built up a wealth that invested the whole family and gave him a comfortable old age: a hut of cement mixed with mud mixed with sand mixed with clay mixed with cow shit, a floor of cement mixed with earth mixed with straw mixed with semi-crushed tiles left over from the muzungu, a veranda mixed with a clearing and a toilet mixed with shit.
Then a makuti roof covered in mabati covered in makuti ("aesthetics also have their part to play, but the important thing is that it doesn't rain in the house" was Grandpa's thought), a bed covered in rags, a wardrobe covered in dust and bare furniture. Finally, options such as three-legged chairs, a two-handled table, a shelf each and a wall-mounted bedside table (the same shelf in disguise); luxury stuff, which few could boast of.
His rheumatism was safe at night.
His whole village enjoyed the old man's administrative skills: flowering fences to mark the boundaries of the land, sturdy cookware, a vegetable garden that would be the envy of any Padanian farmhouse, a football team of goats (including reserves), three milk cows (Federica, Fabiola and Angelina, named after three famous Malindi muzungas that, ) and a well, the most expensive expense of all, half-funded by two Italians who had taken to heart the fate of their grandson Ray, born with a severe corneal malformation but a great talent for music.
After having him treated, they improved his natural habitat.
A year later they decided to ask for custody of him so that he could study at a conservatory in northern Italy.
In short, compared to many other Giriama villages, Kakoneni was a 'middle-class' village.
"But what if I had been even richer? - with my head and my altruism I would have equipped the whole of Kakoneni with mabati roofs, I would have opened a club with satellite television to watch Liverpool and at six o'clock in the evening, to the sound of My Way, I would have drunk a Mojito made with Safari Rum, I would have bought a large off-road vehicle, or rather a van that Tumaini would have used to take the children to the best school in Malindi and my nephew Kitsao would have become a Nobel Prize winner.  
The village women would shop at the new market and we could also eat pilao rice, pork chops and smoked sailfish (I know, it's a weakness, but I'm crazy about it, with two onions and some chopped tomatoes... have you ever tried it with polenta?)'.
To my son Furaha, the musician, I would buy a new keyboard with all the keys, indeed: an orchestra!
Then he would get sad and think that maybe with so much money in his pocket and in his head, he might even go mad.
He could have gone to the women of Stradast, drugged up on kikuyu whiskies like Tremebond 7 or Simba Mbito and become an idiot with the poker machines.
In short, to end up like the many Italians he had met in Malindi, who had arrived in billionaires and left, a few years later, with empty pockets and full butts.
"Being too rich can go to your head, you lose contact with reality and with Mother Nature, you can't evaluate what is right and what should be right (wrong, thank God, in Nature there is only man).
Being wealthy brings a thousand more problems, fake friends who ask you for loans, relatives who propose business deals and investments, neighbours who show you their lame son, their one-eyed wife, their mute brother, their schizophrenic aunt, their one-armed brother-in-law, their grandmother with Parkinson's and their dog with psoriasis.
He cries for help and you ask him:
"But only you are normal in the family?"
"Yes...why?"
"Here, take this and run!" you say, putting the money for the ticket to Kisumu in his hand.
There is an old Kenyan proverb that says: "the more luxuriant your shamba is, the more you will believe that the rain will never flood it".
No, excessive affluence is not for us giriama, but I believe that it causes problems for all men, if they are not born with it.
And even if they are born with it!
I remember the son of one of the most powerful men in Italy, the Juventus man. He got a suite in one of the most beautiful resorts on the coast, but then he camped out in the lowest hovels of Maweni or Shela in the company of drug dealers and other muzungu stoned like him. Ah, tagiri...tagiri".
"Tajiri is said in Swahili, when one is very rich.
As soon as you tagiri, they'll stick it to you - my boss used to say".
One of the peculiarities of the Italians who have landed in Malindi over the last 30 years is that they have represented all social classes, from the multi-millionaire to the poor.
Many have arrived at the Equator with a welfare card, perhaps after selling a company listed on the stock exchange or collecting the rents of entire buildings in Italy; some are collecting state pensions at Barclays that are only lower than the salaries of ministers in Nairobi; others have speculated with building or buying and selling land and today can afford a comfortable western life: a villa with a swimming pool, at least ten servants, a top chef, a loss-making business to show that you can afford it.
These are the statuses of the Italian on the Kenyan coast.
But in Kenya there are not only the rich.
Over time, many small men have landed.
They are those who have glimpsed in this corner of paradise the possibility of redeeming a grey life, a more or less happy and deserved mediocrity in Italy.
The word 'nabob' comes from the Arabic nawab and refers to the Muslim governors in India. The former were proconsuls sent on an expedition who proclaimed themselves princes and sultans of those lands, claiming a lavish life to the detriment of the people they went (as a rule) to convert and help.
How many times have we heard it said that many Italians on the shores of the Indian Ocean live the life of "nabobs". Maybe there is also someone who takes the ancient meaning of the word literally and, in addition to filling his day with pleasures, helps and converts the indigenous population.
The villa with swimming pool is no longer enough... how about if we add an orphanage to the status?
So much eco-chic solidarity...
Grandad Kazungu often repeats this to his people: even if it is hard to believe, there is not just one type of muzungu, their resources are not infinite and even their starting point can be diametrically opposed.
How else would we explain that there are those who live in pharaonic residences with streams, small waterfalls, huge old colonial halls where one can have tea and new brianzol green gardens where one can get lost, and at the same time there are fellow countrymen who live in mini-apartments of Arab-Indian conception that are so cramped, dirty and run-down that even the cockroaches look at the ads on the Nation to find another place to live?  
Often the latter category of people come to Malindi precisely because they are attracted by the stories of the former category.
In Italy, it is unthinkable that a mobile Trenitalia employee could meet in a bar and talk about this and that with the majority shareholder of a beauty farm that has anchored its yacht in Portofino.
In Malindi, it is enough to go to the Casino or an Italian restaurant to shake hands with a VIP. You can court the same girl who the night before went out arm in arm with the owner of a fabulous resort and you find yourself on a sandy islet off Watamu playing volleyball with Flavio Briatore and Elisabetta Gregoraci.
Now that's wellness!
Having a girlfriend as beautiful as Naomi Campbell, a small villa a stone's throw from the sea with a garden where you can grill lobster, go to the green tables or go on a safari every now and then with your off-roader... how much can such an existence cost?
Not much, compared to Italian standards...if you imagine the price of a villa in Positano, San Teodoro, Forte del Marmi or Santa Margherita Ligure, the price of a Ukrainian escort as beautiful as Eva Herzigova as your girlfriend and the price of shellfish at the fish market.
In Kenya you can be rich even if you are not.
So it is true that there are the two types of Italian mentioned above, the nabob and the Indo-Arabic.
But it is equally true that sometimes they can be the same person, who arrived in Kenya with dreams of grandeur and in a short time was forced to downsize everything.
From a megavilla to a mini-mansion, from a swimming pool with waterfalls to a leaky shower, from Naomi Campbell's sister to Whoopy Goldberg's cousin.
But you can always tell the same story to those who live far away, in Italy, and receive digital postcards via e-mail that smell of exotic beaches, sun, sea, relaxation and pleasure.
The replies arrive punctually.
It would take images of cold, stress, traffic, smog, fog, trouble and melancholy to comment on them.
"I'm almost coming to visit you in Africa, my friend..."
"Come on, let's buy a villa with a swimming pool together!"
"But don't you already have one?"
"...but we'll get a bigger one, right?"
Because at the Equator, unlike in the West, you can always start over...
It's a matter of principle.
Principle of imitation.