redheadedtravels

Is there something in the water of the rift valley? – not only are the kids in Magara adorable but they all seem to have big cheeky personalities and the smiles to go with it. Photos of the faces of people I come across in my travels take me right back to that time and [...]

I’m not one to come over all maternal very often, but it was hard not to form an immediate bond with this shy and charming young girl in Magara, Tanzania. Fortunately she had a happy family life with a father and mother who also befriended us, so I didn’t get to come over too Angelina. [...]

Cradling my camera carefully as we bounce along the corrugated dirt track, wishing I’d worn a serious sports bra, getting painful bruises under my arms where I am standing up and clinging to bits of the open roof of the 4-wheel drive, coated in a potent mix of suntan lotion, dust and sweat, and grinning [...]

Doesn’t Swahili has the best animal names of any language ?  Twiga for giraffe, Simba for lion, Tembo for elephant – to me these swahili words sound exactly like the animals look! Especially ‘Twiga’, which somehow manages to convey the tallness, the awkwardness and the beauty of a giraffe in one short punchy word. Twiga [...]

“oh, I just want to take them all home” I cry,  as I am surrounded by a dozen gorgeous smiling tanzanian children in Magara village. Until now, I can safely say that adopting a child had never crossed my mind at any time in my life, and suddenly I am coming over all Angelina Jolie [...]

We breath in thick red dust as we bounce over the corrugated tracks at speed, we ford rivers with no bridges, we hold our breath as the wheels almost bog down in the mud and exhale again as we pull free without having to get out and push, and we close our eyes as the [...]