WHY AND HOW DID YOU BECOME A SAFARI GUIDE?

I love nature and passion for wildlife led me to attend training on various disciplines regarding tour guiding.

After 2 years of training I made an employment application and after assessment I got selected as a guide with a well established safari operator.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD SAFARI GUIDE?

• Knowledgeable on flora and fauna as well as cultural aspects of the destination where clients are visiting.
• Should be attentive to details.
• Should interact well with clients.
• Excellent communications skills in the clients language.

FAVOURITE ANIMAL?

My favorite animal is the wild dog, as they have excellent team-work during a hunt.

MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT?

One of the very embarrassing moments for me was when I led a five day birding trip and I ended up identifying only 200 species out of the 230 aimed at.

MOST MEMORABLE SIGHTING?

My memorable sighting was an African wild dog disemboweling an impala before it even fell down, terrible but amazing to watch.

FAVOURITE CAMPFIRE STORY?

Along with being thick and very tough, the Honey Badger’s skin is also fairly loose, which allows it quite a bit of freedom of movement within the skin.

This particularly aids it when it’s being attacked by larger predators and finds itself in the predator’s clutches. It can then squirm about in its skin and get its long claws and mouth with sharp teeth in such a position to harm the predator that is holding it.

This makes it particularly unsafe for an animal to hold the Honey Badger in its jaws, unless it kills it instantly, which is difficult. The Honey Badger can simply squirm around and viciously attack the creature’s face and eyes.

While the Honey Badger might ultimately die in such an encounter, the animal that killed it will likely think twice before attacking another Honey Badger.

It turns out, there is almost no safe place to hold a Honey Badger without it being able to get itself in a position to attack you.

It is thought that if you managed to grab the Honey Badger by the back of the neck and hold it at arms length in the air, that this may be a safe way to hold one, but not a lot of volunteers are out there to test this theory.

There is a theory that cheetah cubs are born with the very same black and white markings of the honey badger in an attempt to imitate this small but ferocious creature.