Kuku

White and shiny, chest out, strut: It is the cockerel. He moves around pround, a gentleman at the center of his world. Step by step he wanders around the fields free. A worm. A left-over of the Christmas dinner. He pecks hinter and yon, sharp, focusing on a fat insect. The young hens follow him fascinated. A dark, a red, and a blond one. They run after his indifference, fighting for getting the first row. They chat without intermission up to losing the breath, sharing the news of the moment...

... "The Brown one disappeared yesterday... I bet she went to brood! She found a nice nest in the forest and we will see her again in one month, with her following of chicks"...

... "The comer is so boring... Yes, exactly, the ugly one, without feathers on the neck... anyway, she is about to have her eggs and she is screeching all the time because she wants to mix them with mines... such a good-off!"...

... "Oh poor thing... The Black one brooded a dozen of eggs but only three effectively etched... the hawk has already taken two of them, so she has remained with only one chick... but you should see how sweet it is!"...

The older hens are more quiet. They brood in a corner of the house, or in a hole hidden between the thorns of a bush. The mothers cluck wandering around with their children, only worried about their well-being. They jump around looking for a just cultivated field, an anthill of proteins, a dirty pan. They even dare to enter in the houses, frisking on the coach and suprising with their cackling the dozen off mistress. The chicks, if they survive, will grow up strong and healthy. Wild, active, quick. Very nice. Up to the next Christmas they will scamper free around the field, greating the coming mornings with their singing.

A taste of cherry

"You want to give up the taste of cherries?"

Ta'm e guilass

The way is rough, course, bent... Thorns. Tears. Anguish. But look: there is a cherry tree in that garden. Go on, I know the way. It is longer, but more confortable and pleasant. Just go there. Sense the parfume of the cherries. Admide their red beauty. And then taste one. Focus on that taste. Enter in it. Smile to it. As like it is the only existing thing. So sweet... Eat another one. And another, and one more. And now look at the sun. The rain. The wind. The children playing over there. Shake the tree, and fill your pockets with cherries. Then go on walking. Give a handful of cherries to everybody you meet on your way. And do never forget. I tell you: My friend, don't give it up.

Lugalo

  

Lugalo... A place like others in the heart of Tanzania...

A typical mountainous African village. Houses made of mad, roofs of grass, nights illuminated from the only stars, fresh mornings greeted by the singing of cocks and the bangs of the hoes. The families depend on their works in the fields; they eat what they cultivate and what, during the rain season, starts growing spontaneously hither and yon. Some women try to buy a bit of success by boiling the local maize-beer in caldrouns. Enterprising young boys, after being emigrated into the big cities and having tasted a still harder life, come back to their natal village for starting some kinds of small businesses: a shop, a simple inn, a garden center. Taxi-motorcycles, with neither insurance nor rearview mirror, dart on the red mad way. Others during the lucky months of December, January and February, work as day labourer in the close fields in order to earn some shillings, hoping that the amount will be enough to pay the bride price agreed with the parents of their future wife.

Lugalo, a small world in the middle of nothing? No. “It is almost city!”, that's what one says. With the time, that is what it will become. The reason is simple: the road. The tarmac Dar es Salaam – Lusaka route, connecting Tanzania to the close Zambia (TANZAM-highway), is passing through the village. Moreover Lugalo is exactly at the crossroads separating the city of Iringa (which is only 20 Km far) and the important town of Ilole. The shop makes its fortune with the thirst of the travelers.
The motorcycles, specially during days of weddings and funerals, cash in the fare of whom is too much tired to wait for the connection. The wealth of the village is growing. One can already see the roof of iron sheets of the mayor. Somebody is digging the foundation of his new spacious house. An old woman enjoy drinking her fanta. The fruits of the “tree of soap” are rotting, forgotten. And the hydraulic system has seen many betterments: drinkable water, coming from natural springs in the mountains, flows into the pipes which branch off through the whole village.

Among the wonders of Lugalo there is the catholic church: built an half of century ago thanks to the contributions of the local families, it overtops the land; a point of reference for villagers and travelers. Moreover the schools: primary and secondary. The children are no more forced to walk interminable distances every morning.
Everybody has the right and the possibility to access basic education. The new dispensary is growing close to the school. It does not have yet a roof, but the more optimistic voices say that no longer to come it will in use. The electricity's wires are passing at the border of the road. Only the trasformer is still missing. Maintaining a certain distance, a white historical monument remembers the five hundred German solders killed in 1891 during a colonial fight conducted by the “hehe” tribe chief Mkwawa.

Lugalo has the strength. It is motivated, young and full of energy. It wants to change. The oxes will be soon substituted by tractors. There will be new schools. The shop will be made bigger, and will sell cement and roofing tiles, helping the building of new houses. The arable land will be plought. The spiny and wild vegetation will leave place to sunflowers' fields and orchard. Maybe a new carpentry... You are all warmly welcome!

              *Siri ya maisha ni ujasiri*

Zawadi - a gift

A gift from the sky. This is the cloud of flying grasshoppers, appearing with the rain and following the light. After the first rain shower millions of them are found in every corner, painting green the fields, fresh and clean, beautiful! They are harmless. Not like the ones that eat and destroy the harvest. No, these are very good, as they say, in any meaning! People run and muscle in through the crowd with bags of 20, 50, 100 Kg. They fill them enthusiastic, with a tireless smile that will not disappear for the whole day. “We have now food for a whole year!”, “We fry them and we go to sell them at the market... we will get a lot of money!”. The children jig about happy, catching the grasshoppers one by one in a empty coke bottle. “At last a bit meat... and everything for free!”. A mama, sweating by transporting her heavy bags of bugs, tell us confidentially: “With these I will prepare a delicious soup!”.

And then nothing more. It is already evening. For another lucky day, we will need to wait one year, up to the next first rain. Thank you, for this marvelous gift.

Africa

Africa, everyday unconscious teacher. It shows you the world under another light, waiting patiently that your eyes get used to it. The axioms turn upside down, the calculations lose their meaning. The only thing we can do, it is to sit down and listen to it. And it is at this point that Africa drives you. It takes your hand, and together you walk toward the truth. Amazed by walking you find the essence, yours and of the world. You scratch and compress the mountain of roses, to extract that unique pure drop of perfume.

Africa is a book. It is your story, that writes itself day after day. The present broad like the sea. The past and the future in a corner, so small and far that you will forget their importance. Africa can always surprise and amuse you. It is free from any logic and rules. It snears hidden beside the door, fortasting your scare, but then it reveals with a belly laugh. It seriously discusses about politics and finances, but if a butterfly passes it runs away to catch it. Africa does not knock, it just enters and takes what it wants. It is a phenomenon of wonder and astonishment. Africa didn't study the mathematics. You cannot understand it, only you can flow together with.

Africa is a brush stoke of colors. It is beautiful and true like a corncob. It has a big orange sun sweet like a mango, a virtuous heart beating at the sound of drums.

When it becomes irritatingly absurb you cannot do anything else than smile... and it is already past, that shrivels up quickly, smaller and smaller again...

A journey

“The world, small and monotonous with no remedy, shows us our picture, today like yesterday”         Charles Baudelaire

I don't know if I must leave, but I cannot stay. I don't know what I am going to find. I don't hope in the dissolving of this insect. What I dream is that I will time. Time to get lost in a drop. Time for enlarging a bit more the infinite walls of this box. I dream that I am going to have peace. I want a moment without this incessant noise. Even if just for an instant. Even if just for the taste of a whisper of silence. It is still calling me. I am not yet able to forget.

I will come back to see myself reflected in the mirror? After two years always the same face? So be it. You can say it again. I am not going to contradict you. You don't need my words. And I only need to go. I am still looking for it. I still want to fight. And I have a strength that you will never know. I believe. And I will not be disappointed.

Growing...

A bit history...

Kumekucha - the dawn

The night is long. It seems it'll never see a end. The darkness swallows our dreams. It turns off light and warmth, painting everything black. The colors turn to be a myth. A legend. During the night we stumble and fall down. We stand up, the time to fall down again. We are blind. Afraid and vulnerable. We go on crawling without knowing, without having the possibility to understand.

But something is still throbbing in us. We still we have the faith. We tremble in the unknown, but we still have the strength of believing. The sunflowers always know about the existence of the sun. In the darkest dark, their dream is still alive, and they go on waiting for it. They know that the dawn will punctually come in the morning to hug them. They know that its splendid rays will delete with a kiss any memory of sorrow.

I have a field of sunflowers, and I water it everyday. A sunflower for each dream for each soul in the world. Believe in your dreams, as they believe in the coming of the dawn.

                                    Kumekucha!