Ugo was – and still is – a man of many talents, and a perfectionist. He made most of the furniture for the house, as well as cots for newborn babies at the hospital. He drew accurate copies of cartoon characters to decorate his own children’s room. And he took photos. Hundreds of them, which he developed and printed himself, so we are extremely lucky to have a visual treasure of this period, with every photo dated and neatly labelled.

One striking photo shows a saucepan, which was his sterilizer. Another shows half a dozen scalpels and pairs of scissors – his entire medical kit. A favourite photo, taken by Maria, shows him holding a newborn baby up to his ear to check the heartbeat.

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Life was not easy for Maria on Ukerewe Island. Ugo was extremely busy with his patients, and with his hospital, once it was built. She spoke only Italian when she arrived. She was 22 – that’s a year younger than my youngest child who still likes me to wash her hair - with a toddler and a baby. She had to learn everything from scratch.

Once the family’s house was built, they had a rainwater tank, which made washing nappies easier, although the water was quite brown.

There was an outside kuni or wood stove, and a man went to cut wood for Maria each day, often bringing back fresh wood which created loads of smoke and didn’t burn properly.

Kagunguli, the village where they lived, was not near the lake, and for a long time they did not have a car. A priest went to the island’s largest town and port, Nansio, every Friday, to collect meat which came from the mainland. The first time he brought Maria a huge piece of cow, she was shocked.

‘What am I supposed to do with this? I have no fridge…’

‘You boil it all, twice a day, every day. It will last you a week. Then I will bring you more next week.’

Fortunately the island was fertile, and there was plenty of fruit: mangoes, pawpaws and bananas. Maria planted fruit trees in her garden.

She sent Enrico to the local nursery school, where he played with other children and perfected his Swahili. Silvia joined him when she was old enough. Maria remembers that the nuns refused to carry white babies, in case anyone may think they had given birth to them!

Maria and Ugo would have liked to have become closer to the Protestant missionaries who lived in another part of the island, but any contact was frowned upon by the priests and nuns, which made meetings a bit complicated.

After a little over two years on the island, Maria became pregnant. She started taking her two children to do the rounds of the new-born babies in the hospital, to get them used to the idea. I don’t know if you know this, but many African babies, and certainly the ones in this part of Africa, are born very pale, and with quite straight hair, and their skin turns dark after several days, once it’s been in contact with the sun. This soon seemed quite normal to my siblings, but my brother was a bit concerned that I would not ‘match’ the rest of the family if this happened to me. My mother reassured him that it would not.

Like my brother and sister, I took my first breath at home, with my father in attendance. I was born at ten p.m., and the villagers called me ‘Nakilo’ which means ‘born at night’ in Kikerewe, the local language. I was pale with loads of dark wavy hair, just like their babies. I later, just for fun, adopted the name ‘Chausiku’, which is the Swahili version.

Today I called my mother to ask her how she felt during the three years on the island.

‘I loved papá so much, I was happy.’

‘Yes, but how did you really feel?’

‘I was too busy to feel anything.’

‘Did you miss your mum and dad?’

‘Not really – they’d never cared too much about me. They knew we were bravi ragazzi – good kids – and that was enough. They didn’t even really know where we were, apart from ‘in Africa’. They didn’t bother to find out. Papá’s family really cared, though. His dad would write us lots of letters, giving us all the news from home and asking loads of questions. They’d take months to reach us.’

‘Did you get pleasure out of anything?’

‘I was too busy, really. But we would watch the sunset and the stars. After all, with no electricity, there wasn't much else to do after dark.’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukerewe_Island