Q: Who is Kuki Gallmann?
A: I am an Italian-born Kenyan author and conservationist, who was fascinated by Africa from childhood and later chose to settle in Kenya in 1972 where I found both true joy and tragedy. My husband Paolo and son Emanuele died in tragic accidents in my adopted country within a few years but I decided to stay on and make a difference in the best way I could. As a living memorial to them, I established The Gallmann Memorial Foundation (GMF), which promotes harmonious co-existence of people and nature and is active in education, biodiversity research, habitat protection, community service, peace and reconciliation, poverty alleviation and public health.
Q: You first visited Kenya in February 1970 a ‘cripple’ on crutches after a motor crash in Italy. What do you consider your achievements?
A: To have managed, practically single-handedly, to protect so far a unique chunk of Kenya – Ol ari Nyiro Conservancy – with its flora and fauna, its natural springs – it’s extraordinary topography and archaeology, now a green island in what has become a degraded landscape, that only 40 years ago was covered in trees and in herds of wildlife, of which none remains now.
Q: What inspired you to leave the comforts you enjoyed in Italy to settle in Kenya’s Rift Valley?
A: We all come from this part of Africa: it is from the Great Rift Valley of Kenya that our ancestors began their human journey. We carry its ancestral memory in our genes – in the same way as the migratory creatures do. When I first came here, it was a recognition: I felt I had come back home. I felt I belonged- and never looked back.
Q: What attracted you to conservation work?
A: Since I was a little girl in post-war Italy, growing up in the countryside where my grandfather owned an estate, before we moved back to Venice, I felt a total connection with the natural world. The silent noble creatures small and large, the trees, the tiny plants: I understood their magic. I drive or walk now below those great euphorbia, in Ol ari Nyiro, I watch entranced insects dancing in the sun, listen to the chattering of birds in my garden, and tell them without words to feel safe, that they are going to be allright : I am and shall be their guardian. In April this year, Ol ari Nyiro was recognised as an Important Bird Area IBA- by Nature Kenya and Birdlife International; in June it was credited as a Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) both credentials are recognised by the International Union for the Protection of Nature
(IUCN) as of global importance for birds and biodiversity.
Q: You have been at conservation efforts for decades. What keeps you going?
A: The natural world is under siege by people encroaching in all the wild places: the space for the wild is getting smaller. I have long ago decided to give the non-voting wild things a voice.
Parents should not bury their children. My son died doing what he loved most. But he was just seventeen and did not have time to fulfill his potential. His lesson lives in me forever- I work also on his behalf, to make a gain out of a loss.
Q: At some point, you declined film-makers requests to turn the tragedies in your life into a Hollywood drama for the big screen. Why?
A: There is dignity and privacy about a book that a movie lacks. The story I told in my own words – as it happened. Thank God I did that first.
Q: According to your own account in the book I Dreamed of Africa, at age 12, you surprised your teacher in Italy with essay on Africa. What is your dream for Africa?
A: I knew I was going to live in Africa. I have dreamed of a generation of young Kenyan caring for their natural world their inheritance. I fervently hope to primary school curriculum will be urgently amended to include Environmental education of every Kenyan child. The most important asset we have here: we will lose what the rest of the world has lost unless this generation cares. Youth are now more alert to environmental matters than ever before.
It is happening now. There is hope.
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