STORIES

Capalbio, Kenya

A village in connection with Kenya for years

28-06-2016 di redazione

The evening-event on Saturday, June 25, with the exhibition "Mijikenda" Leni Frau and the show of short stories, poems and songs of Freddie Curatolo, has strengthened a kind of twinning that unites two realities seemingly at odds: Malindi and Capalbio .
The village of Maremma in fact is one of the Italian places that have more ties with Africa equatorial and is not just a matter of historical courses and resorts, nor coincidences. It would suffice for example browse a historical book of the Maremma, to see how in the early twentieth century the lands still not reclaimed of southern Tuscany remembered not too far away from the savannah hunting scenes near the coast of Kenya.
Even the huts of cowboys, topped by dry foliage roofs, seemed to be made with makuti of palms and wild boars are nothing but warthogs. Not to mention that then there was malaria as the Equator.
Some historians of Capalbio who went to Ethiopia and then to Kenya were prisoners during the Second World War, they found many parallels between Kenya and this part of Italy and were the first to tell the "mal d'Africa".
Since then, however, many years passed before the "colonization" of Italian tourism in Malindi. Definitely a very important role, not only for capalbiesi, I played the owners of the bathhouse "Last Beach."
Marcello Cima, Riccardo and Valerio Manfredi Ravines winter, once closed the organized beach with restaurant, were moving to the shore of the Indian Ocean and the number of followers they have done in almost thirty years is incredible, considering the that the Last Beach has become a cult place and VIPs for thousands of people, especially in Rome and Tuscany.
Even the great family of the restaurant and haunt of Capalbio "The Crusher" loves Kenya and spends part of his winter weather every year. The room itself gives off that "Africa sickness" and those cultural evocations that Kenya was that of Hemingway and Blixen, but also of Pasolini and Moravia, still manages to give. There are many exhibits that recall to Kenya and Armando Tanzini is at home.
In more recent years the Capalbio family increased hosting a historic malindino, Vittorio "Toti" Frascione, already the owner of the restaurant and hotel "The Malindina" that after having sold the business he moved right in Grosseto.
An increasingly close link and two-way, which is good for Kenya and also to the Tuscan village, where you can feel the pleasure, tranquility and philosophy "pole pole" of Africa.