FIFTY five years of love and adventure is perhaps the only way to describe the remarkable lives of an extraordinary couple from Middlemoor, Whitchurch. There cannot be too many couples who can claim to have run an East African tea plantation, discovered the cause of a virulent cattle disease, help the local population fight the deadly HIV/AIDS, fought off cattle and ivory poachers — and set up an orphanage, schools and wildlife conservation programme. But such is the life of Geoff and Vicky Fox and their story, and so much more, is outlined in a wonderful new book  Flying Snakes and Green Turtles — Tanzania Up Close.' The couple were probably born in the same room in the same tiny maternity home in Tavistock — Geoff in 1938, his future wife a year later. They were brought up, schooled and married in Tavistock —the front cover of the book shows them leaving Whitchurch church in 1962. They have made their home in Tanzania, but their roots are still in Middlemoor, where they maintain their family homes and return each year. It was Geoff who started the African connection at the age of 12 when his mother, recently remarried, took him to Uganda on holiday. 'It was so much fun roaming around the forests and lakes with plenty of hunting, shooting and fishing. It was everything a boy like me could wished for. I  just knew there and then that I wanted to live in Africa,' said Geoff. After two years National Service in the Royal Marines, based at Bickleigh Barracks, Roborough, Geoff was looking for a job and although there were no advertised vacancies, he wrote to tea giant Brooke Bond. He grabbed the chance when the company offered him a post at a tea plantation in Mufindi, on the edge of the Great Rift Valley, Tanzania. He joked: 'I am quite convinced that Brooke Bond only took on the unemployable, knowing that the employable would leave and that the unemployable, like me, would stay. 'What I love about Tanzania is that it is so full of adventure; it is the best of the three countries in East Africa.  What kept us there was not just the natural beauty of the countryside but also the friendliness of the people. 'We were in rural surroundings where the people were literally dirt poor but still have a wonderful capactity to enjoy life.' After 28 years as a tea planter Brooke Bond were taken over by an international conglomerate and at the age of 50 Geoff was offered early retirement. But instead of putting his feet up and enjoying the fruits of his pension. a Swiss businessman asked him to 'deal with a spot of trouble' at Mkwaja Ranch in Tanzania, which was the home to 10,000 cattle. 'The spot of trouble' turned out to be gangs of cattle rustlers who, sometimes with the co-operation of his own herdsmen, were stealing 500 cattle a year and transporting them by boat to Zanzibar. There were also problems with poachers who killed elephants to hack off their ivory tusks. Geoff gathered a small, but determined, private army consisting of militia, game rangers and cattle herdsmen, to fight off the rustlers and poachers. At this time, Geoff was told the local witch doctor had been offered a price on his head of 60,000 shillings to kill the interfering white man. 'I at last had a value — about £50!' The situation culminated in a running gunfight on the beach where the rustlers were driven off, not without casualties to the raiders. More 'adventures' followed. On the ranch the Foxes demonstrated that Tsetse flies rather than ticks were causing serious outbreaks of anaplasmosis, a potentially lethal, tick-borne, disease in cattle. Despite neither having veterinary training,  Vicky and Geoff persevered, despite strong opposition to their hypothesis by the veterinary establishment. It paid off. Their demonstration experiment involved 8,000 cattle, grazing over 155 square miles. Within a year of regular dipping using deltamethrin the tsetse fly population, as monitored by traps, decreased by more than 90 percent. Disease mortality decreased by 66% and productivity measures were raised to levels far above those prevailing before. Vindicated, Geoff and Vicky were invited by the same veterinary community to present the results of their massive demonstration project at international conferences. The only drawback, said Vicky, was that their success drew 'a swarm of international scientists' to their farm to monitor their work — she had to feed and accommodate 168 of them in one year! Because of their animal husbandry their 10,000 beef cattle became a thriving herd of 14,000, although this too brought its own problems as it was not easy counting them every day! However, just when the Foxes felt the 'glow of success', another challenge reared its head. The Swiss owner of the ranch decided he wanted to retire and potential buyers were not interested in retaining the much-prized cattle herd. So the Foxes appealed to the Tanzanian government and asked them to make the Mkwaja ranch into a national park — and even persuaded the European Union to fund paying off the owner. Conservation is very much in the Foxes hearts and another of their 'projects' has had lasting beneficial effects. In 1989 they set up the Green Turtle Conservation Project which has resulted in some 2,000 green turtles each year being successfully hatched and released into the sea. Now in their 'retirement' Geoff and Vicky are busy developing three estates given to them by three villages — planting thousands of acres of forestry, raising livestock and developing tourism facilities. But perhaps one of their most important contributions to their adopted country has been the setting up of a successful Non Government Organisation to alleviate the impact of HIV/AIDS for a catchment of 40,000 rural Tanzanians — largely subsistence farmers, who are among the poorest citizens in one of the world's poorest countries. The results of the project has improved general access to health care and education by building hospitals and schools. It provides accommodation for large numbers of HIV/AIDS-affected orphaned children in a large, purpose-built, 'children's village and, vitally, community outreach in 16 neighbouring villages, to keep as many HIV/AIDS-affected children in their home communities. The project has also reduced the stigma of living with HIV/AIDS, which is a huge step as those Tanzanians infected by the disease without access to medication faced only stigma and ostracism. As the Foxes said in the book: 'Without hope, there was only silence. And death.' Despite being in their seventies their work goes on. Their charity 'Foxes NGO' (Foxes Community & Wildlife Conservation trust) has supported more than 1,000 Tanzanian orphans; an education programme that has established primary and secondary schools, a teaching library and very large community hall, as well as a primary hospital to provide medical facilities for 30,000 in the area and a supporting referral hospital for a surrounding population of 45,000 people. Thankfully their love of Africa has been handed down to their sons who continued their work — Christopher, aged 50, Peter 48, Bruce, 46 and Alexander 42 — the first three all born in Africa and the latter in Tavistock. It has been an eventful life and one which Vicky would not have changed one iota. Vicky, who followed Geoff out to Africa, has been very much the driving force behind the farming and heavily involved in the veterinary laboratory and the development of the herd. She also worked for more than 20 years as an unpaid volunteer teaching local children. Perhaps one of the most touching 'honours' for them is being 'gifted' land for three large estates by the grateful Tanzanians whose lives they have touched. Vicky said: 'It has been a wonderful life. 'The people in Tanzania are so friendly; life is not materialistic there and so remote there are hardly any shops. People are poor but happy. It has been a wonderful place to bring up the children.' Geoff added: 'AIDS is such a problem. To put it simply, if you are not well enough to dig, you don't eat and if you don't eat you die — there being no 'benefits system' to help.  'The Tanzanians are people who live on so little but they never complain and if there's a problem, they just laugh.' Their extraordinary lifetime and their African adventures have been chronicled in an impressive and entertaining book 'Flying Snakes and Green Turtles: Tanzania Up Close' ( ISBN 9781 77123 055 1). It is written by their good friend and poet Evelyn Voigt, a German who herself was raised in Mufindi and now lives in Canada. It provides a sweeping overview of Tanzanian history, through very personal Fox family anecdotes spanning 50 extraordinary years. l A book launch and an NGO presentation will be held at the Tavistock Library in Plymouth Road, on Friday, July 4 at 7.30pm. The book costs £20, a third of which will be going to the Foxes' NGO charity. Copies are also available at Bookstop,  Tavistock. To donate to the NGO, go to the website http://www.wildorphans.org">www.wildorphans.org