England - East Africa - Canada
"To be born in the south-western English county of Devon
meant that the whole of the remaining world was foreign," says
Margaret Ann Hayes.
She was born Margaret Choules
in the small Devonshire village of Newton Abbot, "a
place of stability and tradition," she
notes in her autobiographical work, Where
the Tarmac Ends.
As early as aged eight,
Margaret knew she was destined for an adventurous life. "I
was there when an old gypsy woman came to the door. Looking deeply
into my eyes, she held my hands and said, 'You are born for travel.'"
She left England on a smoggy
November day in 1958, with new husband Victor Burke, and her three
children in tow, bound for East Africa.
Her career as a writer/photojournalist
began as a series of diaries, filled with her own photographs, and
stories of the many nation-building friends she made in Kenya.
She has published two works of non-fiction from these diaries (Where
the Tarmac Ends (1994) and Safarini: Many
Journeys (2007) and has
written hundreds of articles for many periodicals over the past five
decades.
Margaret and her third husband, (now the late) Charles Hayes, (Director/Editor
of Kenya's Nation Series newspapers) settled in southern BC in
1980. The arid climate of the southern Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys
reminded them so much of parts of Kenya that they felt immediately
at home.
Margaret's family is spread
around the world: England, Italy, East Africa, Australia, the United
States and Canada. She has now published five books and continues
to write articles for periodicals in both Canada and East Africa.
