Many years have passed since that February, and yes, February is my month, the month in which I was born and the month that first saw my footsteps tread this lovely land.  
I immediately realised the change that Africa would bring to that individual who lives inside my body and whom I thought I knew.
We are now in May, a May so far removed from that reminder of the shortest month of the year.
.... I like to lie in the sun, it gives me a feeling of well-being but it is rainy season, I like to tan, to go 'black' but tears of happiness and sad hope drip from the sky.
When it is 'rainy' season, we are forced into a forced shade that reminds us of distant emotions.
Some are already born 'blackened' and find it hard to understand why we have to suffer under the sun to colour our skin. 
With a multifaceted and rather meaningful Baby, (yes because Baby is loving and does not concede misnomers), she states decisively, un.... don't stay in the sun, you turn red! 
How red? 
And yes, an amused and sarcastic smirk appears on her sweet face, 'you all turn red', you look best when you're white as 'unga', then you turn red and no good!
Entering the clubs on the African coast, one is enveloped and greeted by a special human warmth, perhaps due to the sun, the atmosphere created by the beers drunk with sympathetic gluttony, or perhaps due to the merit of those who live and frequent the original equatorial nights.
There is, however, something that cannot escape the most attentive observers, that sort of social scale dictated by skin tones.
My friend, tell me why that girl is left alone, she has no friends? 
Ehhh Alex, don't you see???  She, black, leave her alone!!!
How is she black? What's that got to do with it? She's no different from any of you!
Look Alex, take a good look! She too black oooohh, a snap of the tongue on the palate to reinforce the statement, too black!!!
I don't see much of a difference, maybe I'm clouded by the beers, or maybe just my personal social scale is colour-blind and doesn't recognise colours.
OK, let's accept this umpteenth absurd public envy, but without fully understanding the reason for it.
From my point of view, black people are all the same, an African is an African, maybe a few 'tonal' shades, but dark nonetheless.
I have come to realise, despite myself, that there are gradations of colour and woe betide being too 'tan', one risks marginalisation.
Envy, the fear that the other might improve his or her status, abandon poverty, and build a better life, leads to constant discrediting of others.
For some, it is more important to keep others at their level than to try to elevate oneself. But all the world is a country, I have seen people who for a job position would sell their mother to elevate themselves to the role of ...of??? 
There are two ways of looking at things, economic interests out of necessity or human greed, lead us to make more or less opportune choices.
The most morally honest, those truly in love with Africa, buy small houses, the wealthiest plots of land. 
They may use them very little, one month a year, but this is certainly a way of always feeling at home and feeling close to their emotions. 
Having a property, it is like always being there. One buys patches of land in Kenya to feel like that, the owner of the country.
Having a property here, in the land of Lucy, where it all began, elevates you to the head, a bit like marking your territory. 
The real European lions. 
It doesn't matter if you don't live the African life, but I own a little piece of Kenya makes a psychological difference.
Then there are those who get engaged to own even the potato, a crop that is now overused but still very fashionable.
A sort of territorial possessiveness, but it is part of living beings, drawing boundaries, marking territory, having the possibility of saying; I was there and I am there before you, as if the world could have owners and as if those who came after could 'steal' from them who knows what privileges.
In this tangle of small or big business are the African friends and the European cat and fox who, with their 'pole pole', wait for the 'smart ones' like lions wait for their prey.
I cannot and cannot, as many do, judge those who, having nothing, invent situations or professions to make a living, any behaviour, if not delinquent, injurious or bloody, I want to interpret as survival and in some way I justify it, it is easy to mock or denigrate people who have to deal with suffering every day.
Nobody likes to be cheated, to be made fun of, so either we adapt to the thinking, to the culture that is different from ours and not wrong, or we change our ways. 
It is pointless and unintelligent to stay in a place where one is not 'master' of anything and still want to change a millenary reality where the real cats and foxes have been around since birth.
And instead one remains there, talking and talking trash about those who by necessity sometimes have to make compromises, perhaps questionable but equally necessary
I believe that each one of us can with serene suffering look into our own vegetable garden and find mountains of filth without having to go and hoe in the tropical garden of others.
Perhaps we should be the ones to realise that we have taken a wrong turn, and at that moment learn from the Dark Continent what the values are, so as to try to correct the path.
Our everyday life appears to be taken for granted, at the mercy of the system.
In much of the world this is not the case, having to travel kilometres to be able to draw from infected wells is the constant, eating when you can and not when you are hungry is another certainty.
But then what made us fall in love with these places,
the knowledge that we have taken the wrong path, or is it an attitude that allows us to assuage our guilt, towards ourselves of course.
How many times have I asked myself the reason for this passion of ours for a place so different from our culture and customs
How many times.....
Having nothing can be the greatest wealth.
It sounds crazy, but if we think about the motivations that lead us to 'Africa-sickness', it may seem an acceptable justification.
I once asked Jimmy why he did not come to Italy, he had a concrete job offer in wealthy Brianza.
No! Brother, I don't want to leave my Kenya, I am fine here, I have everything!
Questionable statement, since from our/my point of view good Jimmy has nothing!!!
So maybe the peaceful serenity is hidden and lives inside us?   
Finding it is the most arduous of adventures.
The oddities of this enchanted place manage to subjugate the minds of unsuspecting tourists, fortify the thinking of residents and bring back the youth we thought was lost.
It was early March, a sunny dreary day typical of that dreary hot wet advance called the rainy season. 
I met Baraka, an African friend, and asked him if by chance he had seen Amir.
Yes Alessandro, Amir is at home with his wife, let's go call...
No no! Let's leave him alone, he's with his wife....
No problem, let's go, he's happy to see you.
The house is nearby, a house made of mud and woven wood, it has no floor and only a curtain covering the door. A glance takes me to the back of the house, I don't believe it, there's a satellite dish positioned in the approximate direction of nowhere, maybe at Orion's belt, I don't know if it has a television but an extraterrestrial contact certainly does. 
No longer in time to 'escape', Baraka calls Amir and moving the curtain covering the entrance to the house, we catch sight of the friend who, on top of a mattress resting on the hard pressed earth floor, is fidgeting under the sheets with his wife.
I knew it, I think....I am slightly embarrassed, but Amir gets up, recomposes himself and enthusiastically walks towards me.
Alessandro, brother...how are you?
In the meantime, he greets me with a firm handshake, and so far, patience, then he hugs me and claps his hands on my shoulders....evviva!!, I'm only wearing shorts and my skin remains...well, maybe I'll discover a new tanning 'oil' and I'll finally turn dark like my two friends...
By now I have broken the spell and he invites me to go meet his dad in a village not too far away.
So we set off along the road that leads in the direction of Tzavo East Park.
The typical equatorial daily routine, which began with a rainy morning, then turned, as it often does, into a beautiful, torrid African day.
In a surreal context, where the landscape and the view merge with the melancholic but at the same time realistic mood of those who are used to vicissitudes unimaginable to me in order to survive.
The strength not to succumb also comes from dreams, in the hope that slowly God will help.
And so Amir, he begins to tell;
Alex, I will soon be very rich because in a dream, I met a very important man and he promised me that in Europe I will have a lot of money and my dreams will always be true!
I struggle to understand the meaning of his words also because his Italian is rather approximate.
But the story is interesting and I ask Amir to continue.
In his family, there are three brothers and five sisters.
Two are dead, one by childbirth and the other is not known how, simply says Amir, yesterday she was alive and today she is dead....
The father is very sick, he always has stomach ache.
His narrative is in flashes, jumping from one period of life to another with considerable time holes, but it doesn't matter, the circumstance consents to all sorts of transient placements.
One day, when he was a child, he was with his father in the savannah, they were on their way back to their village and suddenly encountered a lion.
He was terrified and tried to run away, but his father told him to stay still, that he would turn him into a plant so that the lion would not see him.
And so it happened, the lion spared their lives.
From that moment on, Amir has the certainty that he understands situations also through dreams and therefore believes in the positive evolution of his imagination.
I like this, I am glad that a glimmer of light is present in Amir's mind, I hope for him that this beacon will never go out!
 We too feed on illusions, on hopes,
we seek the best to make sense of what happens.
Africa has roots firmly rooted in the past that press on a modernity that is growing too fast.
Young people are charming, full of cunning but with few resources, they see us as wealthy, of course mzungu means money, the cash machine with legs, models to follow and possibly to cheat with the most imaginative 'recipes' handed down by those who saw the first whites arrive in this land hoping for and in... 'I'll screw you', the elders on the other hand are wary, they do not look favourably on the intertwining, even if only friendly, between the races. It can be tolerated but with only one end goal in mind.
Amir's father, a dean African man, also looks at his son's friendly relations with fear, so that my visit was embarrassing, but no matter, I saw in the parent's eyes a light of astonishment, of suffering, of prayer... and a great hope that I will never forget.
Slowly the old man lets loose a smile, either because I brought him medicine for his nagging stomach ache, or because humanly he melted into the atmosphere of this different day.
Shakily he gets up, wearing only a white sarong slightly pinkish because of the red earth surrounding the whole place. He holds on to a stick carved from a sturdy tree and tells me: come, I will show you something. 
We go together to the back of the house, a strange courtyard, I see snakes and chickens peacefully coexisting with each other, he 'catches' a snake and puts it around my neck, 
eeemmmm....ok man I don't want it to strangle me. 
It was a baby python, perhaps recently born, but once again my Europeanizing culture embarrasses me. 
Don't worry Alex, he friend and meanwhile leaves me there with this python belt around my neck. He walks away and comes back a little later with a small piece of something, it's black in colour, it looks like a stone but it's not, it looks like a charcoal but it's not 
Thank you for medicine, this is a gift for you, it is black stone, it helps you from snakes and poison, believe me Alex.
I believe, especially after the tale of Amir who was turned into a plant before the lion and survived, how can you not believe this other truth?? impossible!!! 
So, in a place where all emotions are severely compromised by stark reality,
where we know that youth has an uncertain future, where we often discover that justice is not the same for everyone, we still manage to feel an extraordinary attraction for a concreteness so different from our own. 
Knowing that we have a solid connection to prosperity allows us to experience the African atmosphere in all its unique magical and painful splendour.
An atmosphere unique in the world fuelled by scents, breathtaking scenery and even frequent recriminations, but in the beauty of it all, I would add with certainty, also the extraordinary people native to these places.
Let's go Alex, my tired dad, I can see he wants to rest.
And where are we going? I would gladly go home, the python belt is left there and I would like to go home.
OK, let's walk together, I'll tell you something! With a firm and patient manner he starts to tell me another tale.
Many years ago, my dad is old, he is 59, he has seen many things, he is a farmer, he makes tomatoes and my sister helps!
How nice Amir, do you have a sister who helps the family with cultivation?
Yes, I have!
My sister married and helps! 
And how does she help?
She married in Germany, helps....
ooohh ok, good! And I was thinking about her in the shamba growing tomatoes.
We find a piki piki, the three of us head for home, I don't listen to him anymore, he keeps talking, the wind carries away with it the meaning of all his words and my tired ears will never be aware of the pure truth.....