History

February 2005, Capodichino airport, we have just arrived from Sharm el Sheik where we spent a fantastic week rich of immersions and excursions in the desert, saving in our minds colors, landscapes, scents and feelings made more indelible for having spent those moments together. We six, joined by a sincere, deep, ancient friendship and by the shared passion for the sea and scuba diver.

During our weekly immersions and numerous trips, so many situations had been created and they gave us the possibility to know and join each other although we aren’t contemporaries: we are, in fact, from 25 to 49 years old.

Just out the airport, we watched each other and understood that we were just thinking about the next destination!

Saturday, March 2005, we are in the usual pizzeria and we are already taking a look to the brochure of holiday locations. “…We must decide! A year runs away quickly!” I don’t remember who had the idea to go to Kenya, I only remember that, at the end, the chorus was unanimous: “Ok, let’s go to Kenya!”
 

In that very moment we decided the day of departure: February 24th 2006.
We spent the remaining months surfing the internet to find all the possible information and pictures about the location we had chosen: “WATAMU”.
 

In common agreement, as usual, we chose the locations for the immersions, the places to visit, the area for the safari and, because of the favorable exchange, we thought about the possibility to stay there a week more. Time goes by very fast and soon the day of the departure came.
 

Everything was ready: the scuba diver equipment, cameras, video cameras, protective lotions, and we found also a little corner for sweets, papers and pens in our suitcase; because “this makes so much tourists”.
 

The plane left and landed on time to bring us… to a meeting that would have changed our way of seeing ordinary things, our habits, our life.

We got in the “bus” that would have conducted us to our village in about two hours. We were tired but very excited.
 

We passed through Monbasa center, among thousand colors and joyful children. But soon the landscape changed. No more palaces and buildings, but huts made of metal, carton sheets or mud. Thousands people were surviving in that chaos, where total misery reigned.
Our enthusiasm faint while unconsciously we were going to our meeting.
 

When we crossed the village gate, we had the impression to have returned back on earth and that a big door were closed behind us, border between welfare and poverty, bringing us back in tourist clothes.
 

From Italy, we had contacted a beach boy, one of those many local boys that works bringing tourists around Africa. His name was “Tuffo”. He didn’t know to have an appointment, either. We called him the very evening we arrived and we asked him to bring us around Watamu so we would have talked about what to do the following days.
 

Beach boys are not allowed to enter the villages, so we met him in front of the village’s gate… the border. He just was there waiting for us. He went and met us smiling. While he was shaking our hands, we felt the same feeling, that’s to say we finally were at the meeting we planned since a long time. We were immediately surrounded by tens of children wearing rugs “if it could be said so”; their faces enlightened by innocents smiles. Soon there was around us a forest of stretched hands waiting to receive something.
 

Watching us, Tuffo told “Welcome my friends… Africa is also this!”. The younger of our group went back to the village to take pens, papers, and sweets, and with pleasure made himself overwhelmed by the children that welcomed him smiling. Soon their smiles turned off leaving the place to desperation. Their little hands turned into claws because they didn’t want to loose what they had conquered: a pen, a paper, a sweet.
That fight ended soon, living on the ground the younger and weaker children, that, without crying, looked at us with the resignation of who had lived that scene so many times. At the same time our young friend was looking around searching for the children that were disappeared by magic in the dark of the night with the preys in their hands. No one dared to tell anything about what happened, but everyone felt the bitterness of what we saw that night.
 

The following morning we made the first two immersions of the eight ones planned. We never made the other six. pr

The second day, as we planned with Tuffo, we went to the “Tsavo East safari park”. Everything was beautiful and exciting, the red earth path, all those animals, lions, zebras, giraffes, hippos, elephants, gazelles; we seemed to be in a zoo without bars or borders. “…How we would like if the whole world was like this”.
 

During a break Tuffo asked us our impressions about what we saw. We expressed our satisfaction and we asked him what we had not seen about this beautiful Africa, yet.
 

On his always relaxed and happy face, wrinkles of sadness appeared, the bright black of his eyes became gloomy as the sound of his voice. He made his lips narrower as searching for the strength to talk and answered: “…What didn’t you see?” He answered “The truth!”

The truth that can’t be showed to anyone, but that is under the eyes of who doesn’t see or pretend not to see.

And then he added in his African Italian “You aren’t like the others, your way to look at things is different and I will show it to you!”.

It was in that very moment that our trip changed completely. It was in that very moment that the “Africa sickness” cached us.
 

Before leaving, Tuffo told us what to expect there, so we refilled our van of biscuits, sweets, water bottles, dresses, and even toys, in the Malindi market. The van was loaded with everything we bought with the money previously assigned to our souvenirs and the Casino. The following two days we crossed hundreds of kilometers with our van through the internal areas. We reached tens little villages composed by huts where so many children, ( “My God!” never seen so many!) lived abandoned to themselves under the absent look of some old people. When we arrived, the children run away to hide behind the huts, trees, or bushes. Then, after Tuffo reassured them, they came out in little groups keeping each other’s hands. The older ones were bringing into their arms the younger ones and slowly they made a circle around us. At every stop we distributed all we had, but it was always less. We received in exchange a warm and sincere “asante sana” (thank you) together with how much beautiful can exist:, a child’s smile.
 

We came back to the village and, while the sun was painting the red sunset on the bay, we Tuffo inside the tepid water of the ocean, some strokes and then we talked on the beach… “We can do more. Yes! We can do more. Let’s give up the rest of the immersions, the excursions, and the additional week and let’s do something. That very evening we gathered all our money but… how to spent it? The choice was very easy. “Tuffo!” Yes! He surely would have given us the right advise. So “no sooner said than done”, we called him and we went to the meeting over the usual border.
 

We went to a bar and while drinking a beer, we made him aware of our intentions. After having listened to us, he stood few seconds with the glass in his hand, he looked at us and then, with two “big tears” in his black eyes, said: “I have been doing this job for ten years, and trust me, I’ve met a lot of people… but no one like you… during these days I have learnt to know you and I have never, neither for a moment, felt like at your service, but one of you, one of your friends. Asante sana by me and all my people”.
 

We are not able to report what we felt hearing such words; we can only say that we all felt the need to join together in a long embrace.
 

It was decided to donate all we could to an orphanage. The following evening, after having “burgled” a couple of Watamu’s supermarkets, we went there with our van extra-full of goods; rise, flour, milk, biscuits, detergents, toothpaste, beans, olive oil and all the medicines we had.
 

In that wonderful African night, we crossed a path for about ten kilometers absorbed in a brushwood in which a dozen of small oil lamps shined and from the dark , enlighten by the headlights, stocked out shapes that, like zombies, came close to the path curious for our passage.
 

Thank to our driver Simba, we arrived at our destination. Among the trees, in the dark, we glimpsed a fifteen meters long brickwork building. Tuffo got off the van and moved towards a building. Soon he came out with a woman that lighted up the way with an oil lamp… all around there was silence. We got off the van and started carrying the goods to the building. Crossed the little wooden door, we found us in a room lighted up only by two lamps… we got used to the lack of “light”, and only after that we managed to focus our attention on the little smiling faces that were watching us curiously.
 

With the weight boxes still in our hands, we stood looking at those children, more than 50, in their dirty clothes, but with the most beautiful dress they could wear, “…their smiles”. Silence was broken by a pure child’s voice that started to sing the famous song “Jambo Jambo Kenya” accompanied by some instruments made of tin boxes.

 

We felt a strong emotion, from our eyes tears went down without control. Our hearts got used to rest impassive to the deep marine emotions, gone crazy beating very fast. We put down the boxes on a cement table and we went back to the van and every time we returned to the building with other boxes, the chant became loud and loud accompanied by the applauses of the children that looked at us incredulous. The younger ones made themselves closer to their “teacher”, the older ones searched for our hands and, singing, they embraced us. It is not easy to describe what we felt, nor describe the further emotion given to us by seeing our Kenyan friend “Tuffo” applauding us while he was crying.
 

It was not easy to control our emotion but just when we were able to “connect”, we sat among them and only in that very moment we understood that we were receiving more than we gave them…! The moment of goodbye was very exciting; in fact it wasn’t easy to separate from the younger’s hugs and… from their black eyes asking for a promise! “Don’t forget us”.
 

Since our return to Italy, we thought to those children and to the few things we had done for them. We felt like… “drops in the ocean”. But the consciousness that… “also a drop is life” has given us the motivation to create this initiative whose purpose is to gather founds to give to that orphanage.

Sorry if we appeared prolix, but what we wrote in this pages is not enough to let you understand what we felt staying there: the feeling we proved living that experience and the happiness to feel ourselves “… a drop in the ocean”.
 

Thank you from us… and from they all!