Craig Kaufman

My love of Africa started during my time at university. As part of my Tourism Management and Human Geography degree at the University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham I ventured out to Uganda on a Geography field trip for 3½ weeks.

The university had a link project with an IT college in remote part of central Uganda. We brought computers and books, helped to set up a computer classroom, and helped to train some of the staff and students. I also completed projects providing access to water in the rural areas, and a worked on the tourism in Jinja.

My fascination for East Africa remained with me, so after university I went back to Uganda to assist a charity project where I orgainsed the renovation of two primary school classrooms, and set up sports projects in schools and orphanages. I then went on to co-design and project manage the building of a riverlodge on the banks of the River Nile, trained the staff and managed the lodge.

From here, I ended up helping to run two further safari lodges in different areas of Uganda. Whilst in Uganda, I completed two wildlife courses, ‘Bird Guiding Course’ (March 2009) and ‘Advance Techniques in Wildlife Guiding and Interpretation Course’ (May 2009), both conducted by the Uganda Safari Guides Association (USAGA) in Queen Elizabeth National Park.

After four years of living in Uganda, I returned to the U.K and have spent the last 13 years working in Brighton and London designing and tailoring exciting and unique wildlife itineraries to East and Central Africa. I have been lucky enough to venture back to East Africa every year and have explored almost every national park and reserve in Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Kenya.

One of my most memorable experiences was having two fighting hippos enter the lodge dining area from the River Nile whilst the guests were eating their dinner. I spent the next two hours working with the security to keep the guests and staff safe. You can only imagine how much free alcohol I gave to the guests to keep them happy!