Sunday Stamps - Out of Africa

With over 40 countries in Africa to chose from this week's theme of stamps from African and the Arabian peninsula made it hard to chose.

The fossil finds in East Africa in recent years have confirmed Darwin theories on the descent of man. Many of the hominid findings have been in this region and that's why I chose to start with stamps from the countries that used to be in British East Africa.

Kenya & Tanganyika

Uhuru means freedom I believe and these stamps were issued in 1963 when the countries became independent.

These counties along with Uganda issued common stamps for a while.

Kenya, Uganda & Tanzania

Tanzania was formed by the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1964.

Tunisia

It was the uprising in Tunisia that began what is today being called the Arab Spring.

Egypt

Egypt has thrown out its President too, but it was a kingdom until 1953 with the gentleman on the right, King Farouk in charge.

I was going to show a stamp from Libya too but in the process I discovered that the one stamp I have is not from there but from the Lebanon.

Zambia

I've settled instead for stamps from Zambia. Why? 

'Z' ends the alphabet and these stamps are the last in my World Album.

For more African adventures and some tales from the Arabian Nights please visit Viridian at Sunday Stamps 37

All Shapes and Sizes - Sunday Stamps

As a boy I was fascinated by stamps of different shape to the square of rectangular ones in use at the time. Great Britain stamps seem to have remained conventional except for these two which I had fogotten were in my collection.

Great Britain

If you don't fancy doing Darwin's jigsaw you could always relax with a pear. We often eat kiwi fruits but the bird from New Zealand is a different shape.

New Zealand Kiwi

A number of countries have diamond shaped stamps like this from Angola:

I included a Mongolian stamp when I posted Olympic stamps earlier; they seem to favour the diamond shape.

Mongolia

You will see that a triangular bird stamp was also included along with the Olympic stamp. I showed a set of triangular stamps from the Camerouns before when the topic was flowers so I won't repeat them here.

Perhaps those of you in the USA can tell me what these heart shaped stamps were for.

The stamps that caught my eye as a boy all came from Hungary; it took me ages to find out what Magyar Posta meant.

Scanning and and cropping these stamps has been an interesting exercise but for more entertaining stamps ckeck out Viridian's Sunday Stamps 32