What?” you might ask, is “The Rhinos Are Coming !!!

And why are they coming, and where are they going?

And what has all this got to do with The Three Tomatoes?

Well that is a story in and of itself, and it needs an introduction.

Born in London early in WW2, I left for Johannesburg South Africa age nineteen to visit friends, and stayed on… and on… and on. A few years later I moved to Cape Town and started a graphic design firm. It went really well.

But as Nelson Mandela was on his way to walking out of jail a free man, the writing was on the wall that civil war would break out in South Africa. After years of apartheid, white people were leaving in droves. I was a single mum with a teenage son at university and a school-aged daughter. I looked for ways I might escape with my kids.

I was offered a job in New York, sold my business, sent my daughter to boarding school  and moved to Manhattan to set up a new home in case of emergency.  With the support of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, peace came to South Africa.

I lived and worked in The Big Apple for 23 years, (where I so enjoyed being a Tomato). In between were multiple visits to Cape Town and other far-off places for school holidays, often with the kids.

During this time I discovered beautiful, handcrafted papers on a trip to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.

I started Eco Africa Hand Made Paper, a non-profit teaching unemployed woman in Zimbabwe to craft the hand-crafted paper products I designed using their papers. We shipped a container full of the products to a large crafting company in Utah USA.

In 2011, I returned to Cape Town permanently, to re-join my kids and grandkids.

What to do next?

Wracking my brain I searched for something meaningful to do in the last quarter of my life.

I  became aware of the plight of the iconic Southern African rhinoceros, a species that was under threat of extinction as poachers cruelly slaughtered them and hacked off their valuable horns to be exported to the Far East.

Something I had seen in the USA crossed my mind. In Chicago, while attending a trade show, I had come across an extraordinarily imaginative, new kind of Art Exhibition raising money for worthy causes.

It was the first ever Cow Parade. Life-sized sculptures of cows painted by artists, were scattered around the streets of downtown Chicago. Cow Parade erupted into a brilliantly successful fundraising concept, with copycat art exhibitions popping up in city streets all over the world, using different animal sculptures as canvases for artists to paint, all raising money for children’s hospitals and other worthy causes.

Aha! At last an idea. What if we could find sponsors to fund  the building of life-size sculptures of Rhinos, and invite artists, famous and emerging, to paint them.

Artists were delighted to be asked, and very willing to paint a Rhino.

I located a small but very active non-profit called https://www.stoprhinopoaching.com,

focused on saving rhinos from poachers in the many wildlife reserves dotted about South Africa’s game parks, including magnificent Kruger National Park. StopRhinoPoaching was founded by a woman called Elise Daffue. We met. I was inspired.

Sponsors responded. We built Rhinos, and we sent money to StopRhinoPoaching.com

The funds were spent on equipment to arm the rangers who were guarding the rhinos from the poachers who were cutting through fences to get to the rhinos, cruelly killing them and leaving their babies to die unless they were rescued.

Cape Town’s famous Waterfront gave us the greenlight to exhibit our Painted Rhinos for three months all around its open areas in the shadow of the magnificent Table Mountain.

The Rhinos Are Coming!!! was born.

The three-month exhibition turned into three year.

By 2020 an exhibition of 20 Painted Rhinos was thrilling crowds at the Waterfront.

Painted rhinos were being shipped to Switzerland, Sweden and two to The Centene Corporation’s two head offices in St Louis Missouri USA to be exhibited in the lobbies.

In 2021 visitors were banned from the Waterfront as Covid swept the country. Two years, plus another year in recovery, left us with no income from sponsors. Those three years were crippling.

But we did not give up. Seven years since we started the Exhibition the Rhinos are again thriving at the Waterfront.

The Rhinos Exhibition is the Selfie Capital of the World! Posing with the Rhinos, tourists share pictures with friends and relations worldwide. Great for tourism, for rhino conservation, and for artists to display their skills.

Once again we are in action, and soon will be exporting our latest Painted Rhino to a sponsor in London UK.

Rhino poaching is sadly not going away, and we will continue supporting StopRhinoPoaching.com for as long as we are able. Watch our Mini Documentary Video to see our story, and maybe even…..sponsor a Rhino? Learn more at: https://therhinosarecoming.org/