Susan Kathleen Jahme was born in Southern Rhodesia and did
her tertiary education at boarding school in Rhodesia. (Southern Rhodesia and
Rhodesia are the names given to Zimbabwe prior to independence by the Pioneers
who colonized and developed Southern Africa.) Her college education was in
Natal, South Africa.
The majority of her formative years were spent in Malawi (formerly Nyasaland),
where her father worked as a Senior Airline Captain with Air Malawi. After
leaving college, she worked for a short time in Malawi and then found employment
in Madagascar as a Public Relations Officer for an International Tobacco
Company. Upon her return to Malawi, she met her husband, Graham, who was working
on an expatriate contract as an Agriculturist with the Malawi Government.
Together they have two daughters, Kerry and Taryn. Both daughters share the same
love of African flora and fauna as their parents, and they too can fish, shoot
and pitch a tent as well as, if not better than, any lad!
Ms. Jahme, a woman of many talents and interests, has utilized her talent of
working in the business world while she has continued to cultivate her abilities
in photography, needlework, darning, ikibana – a Japanese form of flower art –
flower arranging, and cooking. However, over the past twenty years she and her
husband have given in to their personal and passionate commitment to animal
wildlife conservation. This has resulted in being actively involved in the Black
Rhino Relocation Project that was carried out in the Zambezi Valley. As artists,
they have often donated wildlife paintings and graphics to fund-raising auctions
to benefit wildlife conservation projects. One such exhibition staged in the
Harare Sheraton resulted in their donation of the proceeds from eighty of their
artworks to the Cecil Kop Nature Reserve in Eastern Zimbabwe.
Until recently, Ms. Jahme and her family lived on a farm in Zimbabwe for fifteen
years. They now live in the Garden Route of South Africa’s beautiful Cape, where
they paint, photograph and write about the animals they love so much.