A love letter to Africa

I have never shared with you the story of how I came to stay in Tanzania - so here it is: 

I came here as a volunteer for a conservation NGO. I was meant to stay for a mere five months, but I knew even before I boarded the plane, that I would stay longer.

Our research crew at a camp close to Selous Game Reserve. 

It is hard to put into words how Africa puts a spell on you, how it draws you in, warm and welcoming and beautifully exotic and how it

touches your soul with a force that turns you into a completely different person.

During my earliest days in Tanzania: enjoying the view with my fellow volunteers.

And what is it that moves you so much? 

Is it the street vendor making a living selling fruits on the dusty streets of Dar es Salaam, who presses an orange into your hand just because she liked the way you smiled at her?

Is it the farmer you visit whose children only get one meal a day, but who insists on cooking a meal for you out of hospitality?

Is it the children who run up to you touching your hair and your skin amazed by the strangeness of it? 

Is it the women carrying their babies on their back, plowing fields in the searing sun with such strength and endurance? 

Is it the fact that nothing ever seems to work yet it always works out? 

Is it that you feel humbled by people who live in what we think of as povery, yet who complain less about their lives than we do in the First World? 

It is the strength, the warmth and the generosity of the people I have met here, that made me fall in love.

My husband and I when we met on Mafia Island. 

So when after a year of volunteering close to the Selous Game Reserve, I moved to Mafia Island and met a Masai warrior whose beauty confirmed that I had not seen anything yet, I had even more of a reason to stay.

 Eight years later I am still here and as in love with this beautiful continent as I have always been.