Page 80 - Danir_Arsbok2023_ENG_DiPDF

80

ANTIGONE MEDA, THANDA ISLAND

Creativity – an
important quality on

a ‘desert island’.

Danir has operations all over the world, and this time we will visit Tanzania
and Thanda Island, a small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, just over

100 km south of Dar es Salaam. There, on the paradise island of Thanda,
we meet the island's young and driven hotel director, Antigone Meda, a true

global citizen. Antigone was born in Basel, Switzerland, to Italian parents
and grew up in Mombasa, Kenya.

Both her parents worked in the hotel and hospitality ist organisation Al-Shabaab in Kenya approached
industry throughout Antigone’s childhood, so it’s their business, they decided to find something safer
not surprising she works in what she does. and more secure.

But before she ended up in this industry, “We started looking for jobs at hotels on the
Antigone pursued a completely different area of islands along the East African coast when one
study. She went to Australia to study at Caulfield day I received an email from the then-manager at
Campus, Monash University in Melbourne, from Thanda,” explains Antigone when asked how she
which she graduated with a degree in design and ended up on Thanda Island. “I thought it was strange
visual communication in 2013. But it wasn’t long because I hadn’t contacted them. But it turned out
before she was back in the industry she grew up that my childhood friend Danielle, who runs a dive
with. She started a safari camp in Kenya with her centre on Mafia Island, had applied to Thanda. And
partner. However, when the activities of the terror- I’ve been here ever since.”