Can I Interest You in a Giraffe Wine Safari?

It involves a jeep trek through the beachside hills of Los Angeles, lots of wine, and the (near) guarantee of a kiss from a celebrity giraffe named Stanley. At the “Malibu Wine Safari”, where the movie industry’s animals go to retire, here, you’ll find the kind of Hollywood-meets-hakuna-matata experience you never knew you needed… The safari grounds are…

We Just Walked into America’s Strangest Egyptian-UFO Cult

Not long ago in Georgia, black and gold pyramids stood proudly on the 476-acre compound of Tama-Rey. It was the holy “Land of the Sun,” a place where the self-declared God, Dr. Malachi Z. York, manipulated thousands of nationwide followers in the “Nuwaubian Nation of Moors” to believe they were cosmic purveyors of an extraterrestrial…

The Remains of Maryland-In-Africa

The ruins of Harper, Liberia are as beautiful as they are complicated… In 1833, a group of 2,769 formerly enslaved and and freeborn African Americans settled in the town of Harper on the west coast of Africa. They were part of a new colony called Maryland-in-Africa that sought to “repatriate” free Black Americans throughout the…

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The Scrapbooks of a Real-Life Tarzan torn between Africa and Studio 54

Andy Warhol called him a modern Tarzan. “He jumps in and out of the snake pit he keeps at his home. He cuts himself and paints with the blood. He wears sandals and no socks in the middle of Winter. He lived in a parked car on 13th Street for six months. He moved when…

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Journey to the Most Inhospitable Place on Earth: The Skeleton Coast

Photography by Xenia Ivanoff-Erb Let’s assume you’ve made it to the Namibian coastline, that you’re finding yourself somewhere above the Ugab and below the Kunene River and more importantly, that you have the stomach for this kind of adventure – whether on land or by air. Boy you’re in for a treat of arid proportions.…

Blogging on a Chalkboard in Africa

This is Alfred J. Sirleaf, the founder and sole editor of a ‘blackboard newspaper’ in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital city. Everyday, Alfred updates his newspaper, The Daily Talk (I can’t even paste a link), neatly writing the latest headlines using sticks of chalk in his “newsroom”, a small wooden shack attached to the back of his…

A Guide to Sheep Pageantry in Senegal

You might think this sounds a little odd but sheep pageantry is in fact not all that different to the dog and cat shows we put on in the western world. In Senegal, sheep and rams are like pets. In 8 households out of 10 in Senegal, there are live-in sheep and rams because it’s…

Nigeria Fashion Week: Way Less Boring than normal Fashion Week

Anyone else had enough of the same old fashion week news coverage? A web series from VICE is here to save the day. Hosted by quirky Brit presenter, Charlet Dubac, the series called Fashion Internationale follows various non-mainstream fashion weeks around the world. So let’s escape all that pretentious fashion week coverage and take a…

The Little French Girl Who Played with Wild Beasts

Her ‘brother’ was an elephant and she splashed around with crocodiles … No, this is not the kid from the Jungle Book movie. This is Tippi Degré, the girl who grew up in the African wild and managed to not get eaten. The animals you see in these photos with Tippi were not in any way…

The Luxury Hotel Complete with Live Giraffes.

Hotels just don’t give enough giraffe these days. Luckily, I’ve found one that’s keeping up the standards. Giraffe Manor, located 20km outside of Kenya’s diverse capital Nairobi, is a five-star hotel with a resident herd of Rothschild Giraffes that roam the 12 acre private property freely– meaning they’ll poke their heads through your luxury bedroom…