Sometimes a project is never really finished.
It simply waits.
I Heart Africa Project began with a journey that changed my life. In 2012, I spent four months travelling through Africa, and when I eventually returned home to New Zealand, I came back a very different person.
Africa had given me something I hadn’t expected. It wasn’t simply the wildlife, the landscapes or the incredible places I had visited. It was the people. The stories. The experiences. The feeling of being connected to something much bigger than myself.
I also came home with something else: a growing frustration.
Before I travelled to Africa, I had heard countless stories about how dangerous it was. I was warned about crime, violence and all the things that could supposedly go wrong. Yet my own experience couldn’t have been more different.
Of course, bad things happen in Africa. They happen everywhere. There is crime, corruption, poverty, poaching and enormous challenges across the continent. Pretending otherwise would never have been the purpose of this project.
But there was another side of Africa that I felt wasn’t being heard.
Where were the stories about the people protecting wildlife? The guides who dedicate their lives to showing visitors their countries? The conservationists working against extraordinary odds? The communities, researchers, photographers, adventurers and travellers whose lives had been changed by Africa?
Where were the stories of joy, humour, resilience, beauty, adventure and connection?
I wanted to find them.
And that was the beginning of I Heart Africa Project.
What started as an idea eventually became a book containing the stories of people from across Africa and around the world. I interviewed people from vastly different backgrounds and asked them about their experiences, their lives, their work and their relationship with the continent.
There was no predetermined story I wanted them to tell.
If someone’s experience included hardship, loss, corruption, danger or difficult realities, those stories remained. I never changed someone’s words to make them fit a particular narrative, and I never removed difficult experiences simply because they didn’t fit the more positive image of Africa I wanted people to see.
Because the real Africa is all of it.
The challenges and the triumphs. The heartbreak and the joy. The danger and the extraordinary beauty. The problems that remain and the remarkable people working every day to make things better.
The book grew into something far bigger than I had initially imagined. Along the way, I learned how to conduct interviews, find contributors, work with photographs and intellectual property, navigate contracts and permissions, and bring together an enormous amount of material from people with very different backgrounds and experiences.
The project even expanded into a podcast.
And then, as life sometimes does, things changed.
The project became quiet.
But I never stopped loving it.
And now I’m bringing it back.
The website is being rebuilt, the original stories are being revisited, and I am beginning to look at what I Heart Africa Project can become today.
The book remains at the heart of it all. But I no longer see I Heart Africa Project as simply a book.
It is a collection of voices.
It is a celebration of a continent that continues to inspire me.
It is a place to discover stories about wildlife, conservation, people, culture, travel and adventure.
And, hopefully, it is a way of showing Africa beyond the headlines.
There is still so much to share.
So, after all these years, welcome back to I Heart Africa Project.
The story isn’t over.
In many ways, it’s only just beginning again.