We love talking to locals and finding out about their everyday life in Africa. Likewise, we get asked a lot of questions about our country and how things are different/better/worse for us. Before we came on this trip, we had sort-of anticipated this and so armed ourselves with a number of postcards to show people. The postcards are mostly of tourist sights in London; Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, the Queen (hilariously, upon production of the Queen postcard on one occassion, Claire was asked if Her Royal Highness was her mother).

The problem is that people here can’t really relate to tourist sights in a foreign land; they’ve never been a tourist themselves. Rather, they’d much rather learn about how we (the plebs of our fine land) live, work and play. On this front, we’re caught woefully short of photographic evidence so thought we’d ask a favour of you, dear reader.

Perhaps you’d help us here? Assuming that you have a digital camera and five minutes to spare, would you mind e-mailing us a couple of pictures of people or objects of everyday life? I’ll get them printed here and use them as props to enthral the locals that we meet. The simpler the better: Perhaps a washing machine, a bathroom, a road (a motorway would be really great — they don’t have them here and I’ve yet to effectively explain what a dual-carriageway is), a house, garden, your granny, a roast beef dinner, a pint in a pub or a newspaper shop? Simple stuff, everyday life, you get the picture.

Modern digital cameras take high-quality pictures which mean large file-sizes. African Internet does not like large downloads, so please try keep the file-size to under 200Kb to avoid the premature death of my e-mail inbox (an easy-to-use tool like Shrink Pictures with help you). My e-mail address is: daveb@escapethecity.co.uk

I’ll display the best images in a future gallery page, which will no-doubt become a world-famous representation of modern western society to our African friends and maybe even serve as a replacement for Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man to our extra-terrestrial keepers.