Meet the British woman who visited Tanzania as a teen and never left - and now lives with a brood of seven children. Claire Upshall, now 33, adopted four orphans into her care in 2018 after first travelling to East Africa in 2009.
Since then she has had two biological children - and adopted another. Claire lives in the East African country and says the family survives on sponsorship and help from friends.
They all live in a property with a large garden - which she hopes to make self-sufficient. Claire said: “I just think all children deserve to be in a family so just the fact they have the love of a family is massive.
“I love it, I was born to be a mum - they keep me busy and they keep me going. It has it’s challenges of course, as being a mum of any number of children has it’s challenges, but I just love it really.”
Claire first travelled to Tanzania in 2009 to volunteer in an orphanage and began looking after children who needed a home. She had then adopted four children by the age of 28: Alfie, Layla, Isabella, and Jack, now aged 14, 13, 12 and 10.
Claire has since adopted another youngster – Madeline, eight – and has given birth to children of her own, Betty, four, and Elsie, nine months. The big family mostly survive on the kindness of family, friends and strangers, relying on a GoFundMe and donations.
They live in a property owned by a friend who allows them to live there rent free, and Claire says she aims for them to be self-sufficient and grow their own food. She says the children have all had access to a good education which she believes they wouldn’t have had without her help.
“We moved into a friend’s property a few years ago, just paying expenses and not rent which is super helpful,” said Claire. “We have a big garden so I’m trying to set us up to be self-sufficient – with the cost-of-living shooting up everywhere, it would be great to produce our own stuff.
“At the moment it’s always in the back of my mind that I would like to come back to the UK at least for the children to experience the UK. A lot of how I live is sponsorship and help from friends and family, I just keep going in the hope that we will be either able to make things work here or get to the UK.
“Life is still really hard for us here and the way things have worked out means that in the UK I would have job opportunities which I don’t here. There have been years of one thing after the other, it’s always felt like nothing has been straightforward.
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“There’s been a few occasions where I thought we were close to getting to the UK for it not to work out after all and there have been multiple opportunities I’ve chased for jobs here which have fallen through. I’m stuck here because I’m not able to take them to the UK where there would be opportunities to work, but I can’t get a job here either.
“I’m not doing anything bad, I’ve taken in my children and I’m caring for them. A friend has said before that the vast majority of people, if they’d been faced with the struggles I’ve been faced with, would have given up by now – she says I’m one of the strongest people she knows.
“But giving up isn’t an option because of my children – I have to be there for them. Even my youngest two, I was in a relationship and I didn’t choose to parent my biological children on my own.
“I feel incredibly blessed to have all of my children and do what I do to make things work. My ideal situation is to get a job here and live here, or get to the UK find a job there and work to provide for the family but it just hasn’t been possible.” For more information, you can view Claire's GoFundMe here:
