Safarini

About the Book

Safarini: Many Journeys is a cross-section of the diaries written by Margaret Ann Hayes, from 1958, while on adventurous and photographic safaris with her husband, friends and sometimes with their children.

As a District Agricultural Officer with British Government, her husband, Victor Burke, expert in the growing of tea, coffee and pyrethrum, took many safaris into rural areas where Margaret, a photo- journalist, met and wrote about the African people with whom she met and made friends. Other safaris took them into the famed Maasai Mara to watch and photograph lions at an evening kill, elephants watching over their young, hyena waiting for herds to come and drink at dusk and the many other interesting animals and birds who live there. Over the years, safaris led to Lake Baringo, Lake Hannington, and after an English leave, the family were stationed at Lake Nakuru where flamingo and other water birds were studied and photographed. In Tanzania's Ngorongoro Crater, known as the 'Cradle of Man' she met leopard on a kill, wondered in awe at the millions of wildebeest and zebra that roamed the crater and the prides of black-maned lions who hunted them. She looked at the graves of pioneering ecologist Dr. Bernhard Grzimek and his some Michael, both set with a marker on the Crater rim. Michael died when his zebra-striped plane crashed after it hit a vulture during the filming of Serengeti Shall not Die. His father completed the book of the same title, spending the rest of his life working to support wildlife conservation, especially in Tanzania. Photographs of Dr. Grzimek and his son beside the plane in the Serengeti, were given to Margaret by Dr. Grzimek shortly after his son's death. The photographs are seen in this book.

About the Author

In the days when East African nations were still under colonial rule, an observant and sensitive Englishwoman arrived in Kenya with a new husband - an agriculturist with the British Government - their four children and a lively sense of adventure. She quickly became aware of the drama unfolding around her and, in the African village (boma) of Kisii, Kenya's South Nyanza Province, was soon in touch with out-of-township areas when on safari with her husband.

As a well respected photo-journalist, her diaries form 1958 recorded not only the stirring events of the 1960's and 1970's but also her observations of the tumultuous changes those years meant for the African, Asian (East Indian) and White communities. With an admiration of the African countryside, her photographs of birds, animals and the African people she became friends with while on many an adventurous safari, add vividly to the diaries she wrote over 20 years of her life in East Africa.