Ten years ago, the Mijikenda tribe lost the most charismatic and legendary of its great old wisemen, the ‘gohu’ Katana Kalulu. Mzee (in old Swahili, with the meaning of respect) Katana Kalulu, even though he did not use too many words and did not express himself sometimes even in the Kenyan language, but only in the Giriama dialect, was one of my life masters. Gunga Baya, known as Katana Kalulu, was shot dead at the age of 92 by assassins sent by one of his sons, in order to take possession of his land, which had acquired great value over time, because it was not far from Watamu, the booming tourist town.
Money, money, the only religion, the creed that swept away all morals even in the slow and (once) quiet Kenyan coast.
Executed, like an ordinary man, like one of the many old men who in recent years have been murdered on the pretext of witchcraft, in this new inquisition that burns the history of the fathers and the very origins of those who think only of money. Other than witchcraft, one kills for interests, for property, to burn centuries of traditions and minimal certainties, like that of a cultivated field, dreaming of who knows what prosperity or preferring a very brief and ephemeral glory. The vile filthy money that has not yet completed its cycle of damage in the western world, is conquering like a slow and inexorable metastasis this Continent still too virgin to be untouched.
Katana Kalulu knew they wanted to eliminate him.
‘If they come I am ready, I will face them bare-breasted.’
He had said a few weeks before he died.
But until the very end he kept alive with his warnings, prayers and narratives, a disappearing tradition.
Through him I absorbed stories and legends, found inspiration to write poems and songs dedicated to the roots, not only of the Mijikenda, but of each of us.
A driver for the British during the Second World War, then a protagonist of Independence on the coast,
unquestioned holy man and bearer of messages of peace, defender of a history that is mostly told orally, and appears in the chronicles of Chinese, Arab and Portuguese travellers. 
With the death of Katana Kalulu ten years ago, the hopes of seeing a people proud of their traditions, their simplicity and rituals and customs that would make our civilisation smile, but that never had words like violence, abuse and evil in their vocabulary, were dashed.
Together with that great sage, the Mijikenda killed themselves, and the hope that Africa might one day live a better future, looking back to the innocence of when it was a poor, backward, fatalistic place, perhaps even savage and ignorant, but certainly more peaceful, humane, free and liveable than any other reality.  Ten years later, I still mourn you and mourn a world that is no longer mine.