It’s easy sometimes to forget that being a family, being part of a tribe, isn’t about being the same. It’s easy sometimes to feel a little on the outskirts, as though you were born into the wrong brood, or married into the wrong ménage. But a family isn’t about everyone being a hunter, or everyone being a gatherer. Both exist alongside each other, thereby completing each other.

Family is about difference. Differences. The more diverse the range of talents and thoughts swirling around in your sphere the more well-rounded, more holistic and balanced your world.

But at the heart of this is one thing that never changes, at least not in a healthy tribe, and it is, quite simply, love. A love for each other, from which is born loyalty, passion and a way of seeing everything more La Vie en Rose. It is a love for the tribe and everything that makes it what it is – the land, the people, the food, the culture, the music, the clothes.

It is this sort of love that you witness at a gathering like We Are Africa in Cape Town, where people from all over the world, with all their differences, come together on African soil, united as one tribe by their love for Africa, for Africa’s land, people, food, culture…

It is for all the different stories from the continent that we visit We Are Africa each year. To hear them, contribute to them, and take them away to share with the rest of the world. Over the four days of the show, we captured many photographs of the storytellers and stories, including those that played out at our Relais & Châteaux Gastronomic Bar. Take a look below…

Thank you to We Are Africa. Thank you to our Relais & Châteaux Africa family. Thank you to Waterford Wine Estate for sponsoring the wines and Nespresso for the constant flow of delicious coffee. And thank you to our chefs, for sharing with us the varied tastes from their kitchens around Africa – including Peter Tempelhoff (The Cellars-Hohenort, Cape Town), Virgil Kahn (Delaire Graff Estate, Cape Winelands), Tim Okoth (Great Plains Conservation Kenya), Pierre van Zyl (Great Plains Conservation Botswana), and Grant Daniels (Ellerman House, Cape Town).

“A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.”
― Seth Godin

“A family is like a forest, when you are outside it is dense, when you are inside you see that each tree has its place.” – African Proverb