Longing for Africa, Redux

Annamaria on the Road Again

I am reposting this, not only because I am off on a brief trip, but also because next week I will have big news about the mystery of the inscribed rock described below.  So I want to refresh your memory (or clue you in for the first time) on how I became preoccupied with the identity of an obscure Italian born in the province of Brescia in 1912.  Here is a post from a couple of years ago recounting - among other things - how I found out about a carving on a rock wall in a remote part of Tanzania.  Come back next week, and I'll tell you the answer to the mystery.

The following was originally published in August of 2016:

 

Without a planned trip in my future, I am bereft.  Bear with me while I reminisce.  

Two years ago today, I had just arrived in Nairobi, on my own in Africa for the first time, and so looking forward to all that I would see.

That trip started with a Google search more than a year before.  I was doing some general research for my African series.  I have no recollection what terms I had typed in, but there on the first page of results was the entry for Old Africa Magazine.  Be still my heart.  One click, and there it was: the website of my dreams.

  

“Subscribe now,” it said.  Faster than you can say “Jack Robinson.”  Back issues?  “Please send all you have.”

Once they arrived.  I began to read them in date order.  (You do remember that I went to Catholic school?)  They gave me exactly the kind of thing that moves my imagination most—stories of people who had lived there and then, photos of life at the time of my novels.  There was also, in each issue, a contest to identify some past event.  Nothing I could ever hope to do.

But then I came to Issue No. 12, which was by then seven years old.  And I found this:

 

The words carved on the rock were given in the magazine as: “Benvenuta, ELIA, NATO, 7.2.1912. PARATICO, BRESCIA, WL ITALIA, WRE.”  The page went on to say that though the contest was over, answers were still welcome.

The thing was, I could read that rock.

So I emailed the editor—Shel Arensen—and asked if they had ever gotten an answer.  He responded that they had only a partial translation.  So I sent him mine:

Dear Shel, the magazine copy says that the carving says “Benvenuta"— which would be “Welcome" in the feminine as if to a girl.  But from the photo, it could be “Benvenuto,” which would make more sense considering what the rest says.  

"Elia (usually a masculine name), “Nato” born in the masculine.  It goes on "7 February 1912 Paratico, Brescia,” which is town in Lombardy. The W in "WL Italia" could stand for VV, which would mean  “Viva L’ Italia” (Long live Italy.)  WRE would really be VV RE, “Long live the King.”

So my take: It says.  "Welcome, Elia.  Born on 7 February 1912 in Paratico, Brescia.  Long live Italy.  Long live the King.”

Paratico a hundred years after Elia's birth,

In his first email, Shel had also asked what sparked my interest in his magazine.  An understandable question since he could see no connection between a woman of Italian descent living in New York and a nostalgia magazine about Kenya and Tanzania.  I told him about my forthcoming Strange Gods.  And he offered to review it.

 

I sweated that review.  After all, Shel and his readers were the descendants of the people I was writing about.   Every mistake I made would glare at them.  I am gratified to say that he liked the book.  He even found convincing my characterization of Vera McIntosh, born in East Africa, the child of a missionary, which Shel himself is.

And then came the magic invitation.  Old Africa was about to sponsor a hundredth anniversary tour of the World War I battlefields of Kenya.  With ten books planned in my series and three of them to deal those very places and times, how could not go.

And so I did.

Some if you have read here about my visit during that stay to the wonderful nuns and the splendid Maasai girls at Emusoi, and about my overwhelmingly thrilling safari in the Masai Mara.  I am saving the details of the battlefield tour for when those books come to the fore, numbers five, six, and seven of the series.  In the meanwhile, on the two-year anniversary of that trip, hungry as my heart is to be in Africa right now, I can’t think of anything else to share with you today but these thoughts and the photos that take me back.

My hotel in Nairobi

First destination: Karen Blixen's House

James Wilson's book: the definitive history of WWI in Kenya

Jim recounting the story of the war.  He went and sought out the places
where he took us.  I want him to sit next to me when I write those stories.

Jim found this building.  The first shot of the war came from this window,
as German troops attacked what was then a police boma in the Tsavo.

Our headquarters during the week-long tour was a lovely safari camp.
BIG bonus for me, there were game drives every evening.

The view from my bedroom window.

The tracks of the narrow gauge railway the Brits built to supply their troops.

My fellow travelers--with their LONG lenses, made fun of my little camera, but I love it.

They had trouble capturing Kilimanjaro at sunset.  My camera got the best shot.

We knew there was a lion under that tree and waited and waited for him to stand

up.  The others were packing their cameras away, but I stayed zoomed in and I

whispered, "Come on, honey.  Just raise your head." Just then, he did!  CLICK

They made me prove I had gotten the shot by showing it dinner that night.